Feeding The Dragon

The anger that bubbles up in me feels like a monster. A fire breathing, teeth gnashing dragon, ruining my day, my week, my life. My first impulse is to slay the dragon, and do away with the pain of these feelings.

I slash out with my temper, cutting off his head, again and again and again, but he never dies. He just generates new heads, one after the other and each one makes me as miserable as the last, or maybe even more so. I decide that I must find a less physical way of killing him and think that if I can only starve this dragon then it will go away and leave me alone, so I avoid everything that I think feeds him. No more thinking about the injustice done to innocent children, or the destructive ways of codependent people, or....and in the very act of not thinking about it I transform it into the elephant in the room. Now I am trampled and gored instead of burned and bitten.

It has taken me a while, a long while it seems, to recognize this creature that is making my life so hellish. It is no dragon, no elephant, it is a child of my own making. It is my own anger, born, nurtured and set free upon me and the world around me. I am the first victim and the last, but there are others in between. I cannot kill it, or starve it. I must embrace it, hold it close to my heart like I would any child and allow it to settle down, or it will destroy me.

And so I go back to what I know, to mindfulness, to this moment where I can breathe in and, smiling, breathe out, with all the concentration I have until it once again becomes second nature to me. Again and again, until I feel the dragon drift slowly to sleep upon my shoulder, I simply breathe.

And then I begin to feed him, to allow him to ingest the food that is driving him insane by compassionate listening. I listen to those tales that are so painful they leave holes in my thoughts, but I am protected by the love generated in this beautiful silence within me. Breathing in and breathing out, I listen, truly listen and allow this moment to be simply what it is, a moment in time.

I listen because I care, because I love and I do not allow that love to be contaminated by anything else. And if I cannot continue this compassionate listening, I excuse myself and begin to walk. Breathing in and breathing out, mindful only of each foot lifting and falling, of the light that falls upon my face in one breath and the leaf that flutters down before me in the next.

I give myself the time and the space to move back into the moment and the love and the peace.

It is a process, sometimes a long one, but one that has proven its worth again and again.