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Contents © 2004
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

CONFESSIONS
January 2004

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TEMPER

Temper runs in my family. I have known this, at some level, ever since my brother and I watched my grandfather's mute rage at a waitress' failure to bring him really boiling hot water for his tea. My brother turned to me with a smile -- we were young and foolish -- and murmured, "If I ever get like that, shoot me." Since then, I have watched with admiration as my father has struggled with his own version of his father's curse. I have seen how prayer can help a man overcome sin, even sin that's in the bones.

But now it's my turn, and I seem to be a special case. More and more often over the past year, I have exploded -- the hand slammed down, the voice out of control, ripping up out of the throat. Once or twice, I have thrown things -- soft children's toys, not crockery, but still. Every time, the object has been my wife or my children. And even if I could imagine offenses that warranted such reactions, they have not committed anything close to them.

The development has left me shaken. With other sins, even serious sins (lust, anyone?), it's different. There is still the tendency to look back in wonder -- what was I thinking? How could I do that? It's like a fever, a disease -- once I'm restored to health, it's all but impossible to recall how it felt to be sick. But intellectually, I still recognize myself in those sins. I know what I was thinking. I know how I did that, however monstrous it appears in retrospect, and not simply because lust is an old and familiar foe. I know where it comes from.

This rage and its attendant cruelty are different. I look back at myself, pinning my son to the floor, growling in his face about the way he has hurt his brother and whether he would like me to hurt him in that way, and I am mystified (and horrified). I have no idea where it comes from, and what is more, I do not recognize myself in the memory.

It doesn't come from my father, or my own upbringing. Recently, I said to my six-year-old, "Spare me the attitude -- brat!" The last word might be called an afterthought, except I don't remember thinking it. It just came out, stinky and mean and seemingly sui generis. This is not like me. I do not call people names, even people I strongly dislike. My father taught me to be better than that, and his lessons stuck. Even if someone commits a bratty action, even if they do it habitually, you don't identify the person with the fault. I don't do that to anybody, except, apparently, my son.

That's not me exploding; it's something else taking over -- passion. But it's me who indulges the passion, however little time the intellect has to assent. It's me who receives it so easily. I may chalk it up to a growing family, to stress about work, to financial strain, to frustration with my own failings, but it's still me behaving in ways I never dreamed I would.

A woman once told me she didn't believe that a person could be generally good and yet still be subject to a particular vice. She was not saying, "People are either good or bad and not a muddy mixture of the two." She simply thought that a vicious habit would leech into a person's overall character. You couldn't be, say, consumed with greed and still come across as "basically a good person." I never agreed with her before, but maybe she was right. Maybe to combat the intemperance of anger, my struggles with the intemperance of lust will have to be redoubled.

Passion is a tricky enemy. Avoiding the occasion is essential. But, even if you manage that, it still operates, often sub-rationally. So far, the best way to attack it has been sub-rationally -- through physical suffering, especially fasting. My efforts at fasting have improved, or rather, fasting seems to be having a more salubrious effect on me. Before, it was a help with lust, but left me snappish and cranky. Now -- perhaps because I've intensified it some -- fasting quells pretty much all the passions. It also leaves me weak, listless, and unmotivated. It creates detachment from the senses, but without food, I have trouble mustering the will for much of anything else. This will not do. My wife has suggested a more spiritual tack -- contacting a priest who has experience with evil spirits. I don't want to do it, but it may be what is required.

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