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Anger Management For Cynics

We all know that anger is bad for the digestion and the soul. An excess of the bilious humor can wreak havoc with our blood pressure; it creates a pounding pulse and bombards the internal organs with malevolent hormones. Indignation irritates the arteries, and unrelieved wrath can cause them to clog with plaque and other potentially fatal flotsam. Stress doctors have lately implicated hostility as the leading psychological risk factor for heart disease. In short, anger kills both happiness and human bodies. And the bodies of cynics tend to be more vulnerable than most. 

You'd think the average cynic, having renounced any hope of seeing justice prevail in this life, would make a hasty peace with the prevailing demons and spend the rest of his days in a state of merry irreverence. You'd think his motto would be, 'If you can't beat them, mock them.' But no, the resentments fester in the cynics' bowels; the inequities sting their sensitive skins; the absurdities perturb their fevered brains. A cynic longs for justice the way a cat longs for that plump robin flapping around outside the window. Deprived of it, we smolder with resentment while we make feeble witticisms and listen to our arteries fill with sludge. No wonder cynics reputedly keel over from heart disease at a rate four times that of the non-cynical population.

This is a downright deadly state of affairs. We can't afford to let the world's cynics topple over in their middle years while lawyers, golfers, corporate chieftains and movie producers sail unblemished into their eighties. That would make us even angrier and cause us to sputter out even younger. No, those of us who answer to the name of cynic must learn to harness our hostility and, by so doing, lower our collective mortality rate. 

I suggest a time-tested anger management technique to reduce our risk of apoplexy and other potentially lethal circulatory disasters. Back in the days when I used to scour the self-help books in search of a cure for my chronic eyestrain, which I had somehow convinced myself was psychosomatic, I came across a technique favored by the Rational-Emotive school of psychology. They called it 'disputing your irrational beliefs.' Their theory was simple but persuasive: that all our anger, without exception, stemmed from our own unrealistic expectations of an uncooperative universe. 

Say, for example, we leave our Mazda Miata convertible in the driveway with the top down for the first time all year; it's a sunny summer afternoon, and all's right with the world. An hour later, from inside the house, we hear a thunderclap and think nothing of it. Then, twenty minutes into the downpour, we remember the car. We curse the heavens; we jump up and down, spraining an ankle; we teeter on the brink of a self-induced cardiovascular accident. And all because we expected the weather gods to suspend their customary activities on behalf of our vulnerable convertible. We irrationally believed that a sunny summer afternoon would REMAIN sunny. Once we recognize the simple fact that weather is apt to change suddenly, especially during summer afternoons, we won't bring ourselves to a boil when our convertible fills with water. At least in theory. Better yet, we'll remember to put the top down.

As cynics, we should try to list all the irrational beliefs that lead us to our accustomed state of terminal indignation. For example, when you're at the supermarket, you probably still believe that the checkout counter with the shortest line should take the shortest amount of time to pass through. It seems logical enough on the surface, but Bayan's Law of Supermarket Checkouts tells us that whichever line you choose AUTOMATICALLY becomes the slowest. Once you're aware of this immutable natural law, you won't be tempted to bop the cashier with a bag of Fritos when you see the shoppers on the longer lines pass you by. 

In much the same way, we expect the most intelligent and hardworking employees to be hoisted to the top of the company heap. But that's just silly; we know for a fact that employees are rewarded primarily for being high-energy team players who dress like the vice president of their department. Acknowledge your irrational belief that merit should be rewarded, and you'll have an easier time of it in the business world. 

When we're in love, we expect our partners to make us happy for life, if not longer. How foolish of us. Sociobiology has confirmed what cynics have always suspected but never really wanted to believe: that all human behavior is motivated by self-interest, primarily on a genetic level that we can't even control. So why the wasted weeks of fury and despair when the object of our desire tramples our feelings or leaves us for a member of the Rumanian bowling team? It's nothing personal, after all -- just an itch in the genes. 

Perhaps the most irrational belief of all is expecting the world to be rational. Once we resign ourselves to the obvious fact that the world is crazy, we'll immediately be more sane -- and considerably less angry. If that sounds vaguely like a page from 'Catch-22' -- well, maybe Joseph Heller was on to something. He was a cynic, too.

Cynic's Pick of the Week
It appears that American magazine publishers don't have a monopoly on exploitative niche marketing. A Dutch publisher has just launched a glamour and fashion magazine called 'Mainline Lady.' Its target audience: female junkies, most of whom could presumably use a few pointers on hiding their needle marks or sprucing up their pallid cheeks.

© 2001 by Bridget Petrella Media Relations. "Some Cynical Guy" appears here by permission of the publisher. If you'd like this column to appear regularly in  your own site or publication, write to UPBEATmag@aol.com.

Profile of a Cynic...

Bayan, who claims to be a "kinder, gentler cynic," currently lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania. His weekly column, "Some Cynical Guy," is published and syndicated by Upbeat Online. 

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