On My Walks

Today I didn’t walk alone; I walked with anger.  Anger doesn’t make a very good companion, keeping me distracted from the views and observations of interesting happenings along my way.

When I heard the voice of a small boy calling, “Hi! Hi! Hi!” while lifting his shirt to show me his belly button, anger tugged my arm to keep me from stopping to say more than “Hi and bye.”  Anger didn’t want me to lose the intensity of negative feelings.

And so we walked on, anger and I, all along my usual path.  At the bottom of the hill, we passed a cat that looked ominously about to enter the road.  I stopped and called to it but it didn’t come.  Should I try to intervene or had the cat traveled this path a thousand times?  Anger encouraged me to leave it, confident the cat could find its own way.

Anger didn’t dissipate but stuck with me along the entire loop until I crested the hill a second time and gazed again at the spectacular view of the mountains.  That’s when I had had enough and I walked on leaving anger there to fend for itself.