Frustration's Quiet Little Fire

A guide to power, apart from anger.

Our family home burned down when I was 9.

Now, this sounds wayyy more traumatic than it was because we weren’t actually living in it yet. The house was a 4-bed, 2-bath colonial revival (for my fellow architecture nerds) that sat on a corner lot, a 5-minute bike ride from the local high school.

Two weeks before we were set to move in, the current inhabitant, a lifelong smoker at the ripe age of 73, decided it was a good time for an at-home oil change. So, he moseyed his way into the garage for some handiwork before dinner. At some point (according to the stories we were told about the reports), a cigarette butt that wasn’t quite out lit a little fire. That little fire climbed its way around to an old gas can. And then BOOM!

The older couple said that by the time they heard the noise, the garage was already half in flames, and by the time the fire department arrived a few minutes later, it was completely gone, along with 30% of the home.

I remember my parents driving by the day after. I was in the backseat, slightly horrified but mostly memorized by the scene. It looked like a movie set — burnt wood and black ash everywhere, and then, at just the right angle, everything appeared perfectly fine.

We drove home, and I remember thinking to myself…a little fire did this.

Smaller Words

It’s funny that we’re now 7 f-words into this series, and each one has lined up with my life almost perfectly.

I wrote about fear as I decided to launch this project into the world, failure as I shuttered my previous dead endeavor, fun as I planned a vacation…and on and on the coincidences went.

This one is no different. I’m perturbed at the moment. I like that word because the image in my head when I say it is of a middle-aged Englishman (think Bridgerton era) holding a teacup in one hand and the saucer in the other, scowling the most pompous, disgusted look at some invisible annoyance.

Perturbed. Just wonderful.

But of course, by perturbed, I mean frustrated (our f-word of the week). And when we say frustrated, what we really mean is angry.

This was something I noticed when I first started jotting down notes for this edition. Anger is a heavy word we reserve for big things (e.g., injustice) and wild acts of outrage (e.g., punching a Chipotle worker).

But in our everyday lives, we use smaller words. We say, “I’m not angry, I’m just…frustrated.” Frustration is a step down from anger. Or at least we treat it as such.

In my own life, frustration is a sort of embarrassed anger.

It's okay to be angry at some billionaire making the world a worse-off place, but when your dog pees on the carpet you just had professionally cleaned — that's frustration territory.

That, my friend, is a little fire.

Why We Get Angry

To help us understand what we were getting into, I picked up the book The Cow in the Parking Lot: A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger by Leonard Scheff and Susan Edmiston.

Leonard, who the story centers around, was a lawyer who turned to Buddhism to help him stop being such as ass to people (and thereby saving his career, marriage, etc.). It worked. He found a way forward that allowed him to cast off his default angry demeanor and adopt a more level-headed approach to life.

I think you (and I) can do the same thing without becoming monks or even reading his entire book. The crux of his argument centers around where anger comes from. And this is something we can use.

The cause of anger is simple: Anger arises when we have unmet demands.

Now, if that sounds a little tantrummy to you — I felt the same way. But when you peel back enough layers, you'll find that it's always true. Anger shows up when there's a gap between what you want or expect or need and reality. When something doesn't work like it should, or a person breaks your trust, or life slams the brakes on all your plans in the most disrespectful way possible.

All of these represent the space between what could be and what isn’t.

But there’s one more thing at play.

It’s not just that a thing didn’t happen that boils our blood. It’s what that situation says about us and our ability to influence our world.

Power Pt. 1

Anger is about power. Mainly our lack of it.

It riles us up and pushes us out of our thinking mind into something instinctual, habitual. Often to our own detriment. When we act out of anger, we’re acting for our anger — we’re “assuaging our own emotional distress” — because in the moment, it feels like the two are one: our anger and our power.¹

But it’s not true. Anger is not power, even though it feels like it is.

So, then, what do we do? If not from the fire, where does our power come from?

Power Pt. 2

Up until this point in our f-word series, our focus has been on developing the language needed for mental health.

If you’ve ever visited a country where you didn’t know the language, you know what it feels like to be an outsider. To feel other, like you don’t quite get what’s going on or how to get what you want and you’re supremely at the mercy of everyone around you.

That’s what it’s like when you don’t have a language for your mind. You become a passenger to your own thoughts and emotions — which themselves are like little ping-pong balls bouncing off every circumstance and stranger that bumps into your life.

It’s exhausting.

But language gives you back some control. It helps you navigate a confusing world where your inside life can make your outside life an amazing or terrible thing to inhabit.

And then part two comes into focus: speaking that language to get what you want. To influence the world around you. This is your power.

Frustration’s End

If anger is the result of an unmet need and a lack of power, your voice is its kryptonite.

You see, frustration is often the consequence of silence.

It's not just that we didn't get what we needed; we never even asked for it in the first place. And that's what really grinds our gears more than anything else.

When we fail to set appropriate boundaries or ask for what we really want or give an honest opinion or say no or admit we’re scared/overwhelmed/unhappy that is when frustration sets in.

Frustration is a warning sign, not so much that we feel powerless, but that we are neglecting to use our power, our voice. The little fire’s job is to catch our attention before it becomes a big fire. Before the house goes up in flames.

Anger rarely shows up all at once. It likes to send visitors ahead of its arrival. And what we do with them determines whether the big bad shows up at all.²

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Maybe your mind really is on your side. And the stress or frustration you feel is for you because there's something you're not saying…a part of your power you're not using. Maybe that's what every f-word is trying to get you to see…

How much power you really have in creating the life you want.

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Challenge #8: A Moment in the Fire

1. In case you want the full quote: “When we act solely out of anger, with little regard for consequences, we are not pursuing the greater good but are only assuaging our own emotional distress.”

2. “Big bad” is my small nod to Schoenbrun’s I Saw The TV Glow.