Priming the Anger Pump

The funny thing about outbursts of anger is that often they aren’t outbursts at all, but rather something more planned and considered, and then presented to appear spontaneous.  In a close call at an intersection, where part of what made it a close call is that you didn’t see the danger coming, you don’t have time to get properly worked up because you’re too busy trying to save your own skin.  It’s only after the encounter where you line up your insults and obscenities, for the next time.

Or let’s say you do see that close call coming a ways off and get all ready to be angry; doesn’t your degree of outrage depend on who the other party is?  Isn’t it less if the culprit vehicle is a huge four-wheel drive pickup with a gun rack, driven by a gorilla and not, say, a hybrid with a ninety-eight pound weakling at the wheel?  If we are selective about our supposed spontaneous outbursts of rage, how spontaneous are they? 

I think people in trafficked spaces dwell on their negative encounters a disproportionate amount of the time.  We could go for most of a week with uneventful travel, but stew the whole time about that one event that set us off.  We don’t even have to be in the right to rehearse being angry about it.  This may be an old survival mechanism, fixing in our minds a dangerous situation so we recognize it the next time around.  Or we could be readying ourselves for verbal exchanges that vindicate us somehow.   

‘Vindicate’ and ‘vindictive’ share the same Latin root word, which means revenge or the act of avenging.  I think that’s what we’re doing when we have that ‘spontaneous’ loss of temper: getting revenge for being put at risk, avenging our vulnerable selves.  But do outbursts of anger, planned or not, make cyclists any safer? 

I don’t think so, but what I do know is that being all ready to lose my temper during traffic encounters takes a lot of the fun out of riding a bike.  Cruising around with a big pannier full of not-really spontaneous outrage is exhausting, and can ruin the 99.9% of a ride that is encounter-free.  I’ve come around to the belief that the sooner I get through the encounter without responding angrily, the better the rest of the day is.  This is not a capitulation to an harmonious, ‘We are the world’ point of view, this is a purely selfish conclusion; how much of my day and my ride am I willing to give over to someone who did something to me in traffic?  If I made it through the encounter, what more can be accomplished at that moment, especially with outrage?  To me, the incident has already cost me enough mental tension to deliberately contribute more.

I actually feel safer now.  I have fewer interactions I would even call encounters, and without my prepackaged spontaneous outburst priming the anger pump, the ones I do have are a lot less tense.  I slip past whatever it was that jolted me out of the joyous experience of riding my bike and think, ‘now where was I?’