My daughter is 11.  A joy, she’s still in those years when her favorite resting place is in my lap, us looking out on the world together.  Late one night last week, the warmth of her face next to mine was sweet. She leaned in toward me, her arm around my neck, her fingers close to my cheek.  I knew she was deep in thought.  I knew we needed to talk.

It seemed a long time since the night before that one.  I had yelled at her and her mom over a raunchy rap video that suddenly appeared when I turned on the TV.  My immediate assumption was that my daughter had somehow “dialed in” this music video on purpose, and forgotten to change channels.  I was furious and blamed her.  I was disgusted as foul language blared from the speakers, the rapper thrusting sexually at the camera.  My shock quickly turned to outrage and disbelief.  My daughter did this?  I scolded her loudly.  “I didn’t do it!”, she protested.  Her mother chimed in, similarly defensive.  “She didn’t do it!”, pleaded my wife.  I wasn’t swayed.  My anger rose like a dark cloud around me.  I struggled to stay present, to no avail.  I warned them harshly, then sat helplessly away from them as the evening dissolved.  The good vibes of family viewing crushed by my over-reaction.  I felt spent, alone and adrift.  A twinge of shame followed me as bedtime came quickly for us all.  I suddenly felt very tired, and very lonely.

In meditation the next morning, I watched the gray night surrender to orange and mauve shadings of dawn.  Incense smoke lay gently along the wet grass under my feet.  My head had cleared.  My sanity was returning.  A deep grief still lay in my chest and I couldn’t wait for “my girls” to get up.  I had apologies pushing up out of my heart.  “Make amends…” say the 12 steps.  That was me.  That was us.  I needed to heal the breach I had caused in my family.  Not the first time I’d sought forgiveness from them and, of course, I was sure not the last.

Fully rested, I realized my huge mistake and my daughter’s innocence.  It wasn’t her fault.  Fact:  sometimes our  TV gets hijacked like that.  Last night it was me who got hijacked, my anger sparking, pushing me to dark places, scaring and hurting the ones I love. “Rage is an escape from true feeling,” writes Buddhist author Pema Chodron in her book “Wisdom of No Escape”.  We fail to manage our grief and fear and then, when stress pushes us too far, we rage to “ventilate the experience”, ultimately “leaving the scene” in our emotional outbursts.  Chodron counsels to “keep our seat”, that is, to stay grounded and sit with the strong emotion without acting it out as best we can.  From this practice we grow spiritually stronger than through it’s direct expression.  Let no one kid you about the old therapy practice of pounding pillows with a plastic bat getting rid of anger.  Nonsense.  It just gives you practice being angry.  The Buddhist definition of “warrior” is one whose battles are within herself over “containing” her feelings and the impulses they inspire.  Michael Singer in the book “The Untethered Soul”  encourages us to “let the waves of angry emotional energy pass through us”, watching ourselves carefully from our innermost “observer-self”.  Learning from our emotions means paying attention, not always acting on all of them.  Important for me that day and since to remember that even when I fall short of these Buddha-like aspirations, I can still be a pretty good dad.  The process of making those amends took time and patience.  It brought us closer.  It also reminded me of Sylvia Boorstein, author of “It’s Easier Than You Think”, (in my opinion, the best short primer for learning meditation I’ve ever found).  It it, she writes about failure, getting off track, and our tendency to be harsh with ourselves when we lose ourselves in emotion and distraction.  In her inimitable wise, grandmotherly Jewish voice, she reminds us to simply be pleased that we’ve caught ourselves “off the path” and then gently return to it.  “Way to go” she says.  “Now have some tea”.

John