RonRoss's blog

Before anyone had ever heard of him, Jerry Seinfeld walked on stage at a comedy club, looked out at the audience and froze with fear. He was eventually booed and jeered off the stage.

Have you failed at something really big?  Maybe your business went broke or a marriage failed. Perhaps you took an important test and failed it with flying colors.

When you fail at something, it’s common to hunker down, to disappear from the scene until the shame of you failure fades. You need some time to lick your wounds, clean up the mess, and get over the humiliation of it all.

It is claimed that depression affects an estimated 33 to 35 million U.S. adults at some point during their lifetime. The symptoms are numerous: trouble focusing, sadness, irritability, hopelessness, trouble sleeping, weariness, feeling worthless or guilty, major weight change and/or disinterest in favored activities.

I’m showing my age here, but there is an old country song performed by the late Tennessee Ernie Ford titled “Sixteen Tons.” The song is about a miserable coal miner who could never seem to get ahead no matter how much Number 9 coal he could haul out of the mine.

The chorus went like this:

“You haul Sixteen Tons, whadaya get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store.”

Everyone was afraid on the morning of September 11, 2001. We watched our televisions in horror as the Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon burned. We couldn’t believe how little was left of the plane that went down in a Pennsylvania field.

Lusaka, Zambia was our final destination. Since it was our first time outside the United States the few days spent in London, Paris, Rome and now Athens had left our bodies confused by time changes, our minds exhausted by currency transactions, and our hearts longing for the good old USA.

For some unexplained reason our flight from Athens to Lusaka was delayed. Our planeload of anxious passengers was herded into a small holding room in the Athens airport to await further instructions.

Anger experts report that anger develops more often within marriages and families than anywhere else. The second most common place for episodes of anger is the work place. Did you need an expert to tell you that? While you may not need experts to tell you when and where you are angry, a little help in understanding how to deal with this powerful emotion can be helpful.

Last week I discussed BLOW OUT and STRIKE OUT as two ways people deal with anger. This week I’ll talk about three more ways people deal with anger.

Traffic jams, rude customers, unkind co-workers, critical employers, ungrateful children, an insensitive mate all can make us mad; some with very little effort. How you express your anger will determine whether these important relationships will bloom or wilt, strengthen or weaken?

What is your favorite way to express anger?

“Hypocrite!” That’s a charge oft heard by people who believe something and then because of their human weaknesses somehow fail to live up to the standards they have set for themselves or others. So the other day I decided to study the word to discover what those ugly nine letters are all about.

The world didn’t end on Friday, Dec. 21, 2012 like the Mayan calendar indicated. I wasn’t surprised, were you?

For the weeks preceding the Mayan doomsday date the National Aeronautic and Space Administration calmed fears among those who thought a bunch of Mayans a few millennia ago could predict the end of the world. I’m thinking they didn’t predict anything. I’m thinking they got tired of chopping calendars out of stone and went home for supper. I mean, how many calendars into the future do you really need?

What was the first Christmas song you remember singing?

If you went to Sunday school as a child it’s likely that it was “Away in a Manger.”

You remember how it goes, don’t you?

Away in a Manger no crib for His bed,

The little Lord Jesus laid down His sweet head.

The stars in the bright sky looked down where He lay,

The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.