Why take out our Frustration on someone else?
Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:
James 1:19
We are all guilty of this at some point; it’s human nature, I suppose. Just how reprehensible is it?
Running late for work and you realize you left your keys in the car last night as you approach the driver’s side. Recognize that it’s completely your fault. Then scream at your girlfriend and blame everything on her (even though it’s not her fault at all), and you keep screaming at her until she cries.
Get to work later (just on time!), you sit down, relax, start working, and everything’s okay. You then realize how awful you were for taking your frustration out on your girlfriend, and you call her to apologize.
Is this sequence of events acceptable, reprehensible, or somewhere in between?
Apology accepted, or not?
Inner perspective: we attempt to justify ourselves as to why we reach the boiling point at the time. Started off being behind schedule and trying to make amends. Out of the blue, we do something unexpected to add to our lag. Now realize the loss of work time is in jeopardy. Now we are fuming because thinking nine times out of ten we could not do this in our sleep but now that lesson is useless at the moment. Unable to shout at the car or driveway since they humanly have no ears. We are looking for an outlet to release the nature of events experienced. The only ears we come across are our spouse or mate that is in the vicinity.
Outer perspective: The feedback received from our spouse is that our anxiety overwhelmed us that being behind schedule, we were just tuned out. Rushing and not recognizing the trail of the mess we left behind in the bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. Then our spouse not hearing anything once we left the house. Only to come back inside furious and screaming, shouting, and picking up any item light we could find and throwing it around. Then giving an ear full about how it was their fault and not ours and storming out to attend to the matter at hand with time not in our favor.
Fact
Things will happen that we might overlook no matter how routinely sound we intend to be. Human error will play a role whether we intend to be ready for it or not. The point is taking out frustration on the innocent will only make us feel more disturbed instead of feeling better. We might not let on this feeling to whoever we unleashed our frustration on but there is someone always watching us besides the innocent victim. God. Yes, indeed. If we do not take responsibility for our displaced aggression, things always have a way of working themselves out. We reap what we sow. Therefore, it is better to apologize and truly learn from our mistakes and improve ourselves to be better the next time something unexpectedly occurs.