Junk Aggression and Grow

We live in hyper-aggressive times. Nations are aggressive, and so are people. Aggression is promoted as a virtue. Youngsters are exhorted and advised to forcefully strive for what they believe is theirs. Those who are naturally shy or reticent are advised to toughen up and develop a killer instinct if they want to amount to something in life.

We see signs of this aggressive approach towards people, and all manner of social situations all around us. Everybody is brusque and aggressive towards whoever they come in contact with. Neighbours having horrible fights over parking issues often leading to appalling physical fights is a common occurrence across our towns and cities. The same is true about fights that they have over a pet using an apartment lift or allegedly attacking someone’s child.

People drive aggressively, honking incessantly without reason and dangerously overtaking and switching lanes as if the road were their exclusive private estate. If a traffic signal has broken down, everyone dashes ahead with their vehicle, hoping to be the first one to get ahead. What happens instead is a bad tangle of grid-locked cars, busses, e-rickshaws and two wheelers unable to move ahead, backwards or sideways. This results in an incessant cacophony of honking and yelling accompanies by smouldering glares at whoever one locks one’s eyes with.

This situation prevails for what seems to be an interminably long time, until better sense prevails on a few individuals who get out of their vehicles and attempt to direct vehicles out of the mess. That is when everybody gets to move ahead. This illustrates the point of the article. Junk aggression and grow. Even the biggest battle and the longest war is succeeded by talks. That is the only way forward, or there is nothing that separates humans from animals.

Mankind’s ability to communicate effectively with one another is what gave it an evolutionary advantage over other species. Why waste that tremendous gift for achieving progress and regress to the level of a pack of wolves fighting over a peace of meat?

Modern life can no doubt be very stressful and managing one’s high pressure job, relationships,  and social obligations can take quite a toll on one’s psychological well being which often manifests itself as aggressive behavior. This leads to one's coming across as rude and badly behaved towards the people one interacts with often leading to resentment among the latter, who often retaliate and exacerbate the situation. These situations can be best avoided if one learns not to stress oneself over the ups and downs of daily life.

One could, of course, try out things like regular exercise, meditation and maintaining a gratitude journal to keep oneself stress-free and thereby avoid getting into negative situations. More importantly, one should inwardly realize that losing one's temper does not ever lead to desirable conclusions. It is smarter to hold one's peace and not open new avenues of stress by losing one's temper over what you perceive is someone else's fault.

The thing is that it is human nature to not accept one's own fault and pointing it out to someone is not going to make them accept the fact and make amends. On the contrary, they will double down and fight you every inch of the way. They are too driven by their ego and insecurities to ever agree with you. Rather than mess with such primaeval emotions, let them be. You disengage and get back to doing things that further your interests in life.

The people who are chronically aggressive don’t have it good in life. They may sometimes seem to get away with their obnoxious treatment of those they interact with and sometimes even seem to forge ahead of their more well-behaved peers, but this does not last. There will always be somebody more aggressive and perhaps even more dangerous who will knock them down. There is the old adage that those who live by the sword perish by it. That is true of those who wear aggressiveness as a badge of honour. Such people will eventually excite enough resentment against a large enough number of people who will then turn on them and cause their downfall.

Junking aggression and trying to cooperate with people, no matter how difficult it is at times is the path to the top. People take to individuals who are able to exude calm in both good and not-so-good situations. Such people are able to build an extensive social network that helps propel their rise to the top.  They succeed because they see the world as a beautiful place replete with opportunities to grow and prosper. Settling scores with people who are disagreeable or don’t subscribe to their point of view is the least of their priorities. They are too busy living their best life.