FM February Prompt: How do you handle anger?
Anger can be a very useful motivation for one's employees, and downright invaluable in one's enemies. Naturally, one needs a little finesse and a sense of balance in either scenario. It simply won't do to let the anger in a subordinate reach a boiling point at just the moment where you don't need it to. On the other hand, cultivating a long simmering resentment can be worth it with the right person, say, a young woman with a crusader mentality, a veritable Athena; it can tie her to you as surely as devotion, as she would not let anyone else bring you down.
As for enemies, well, surely I don't have to point out the glaringly obvious: an enemy given to temper tantrums and acting out of rising wrath rarely manages to develop any long term strategies at the same time. Though again, there are rare exceptions, and a thorough knowledge of one's opponent is always advisable.
Or was the question referring to my own anger?
Don't be absurd.
*locked*
Judy Barnett once asked me this question - one of the unfortunate effects of conducting anotherwise pleasant affair with a psychiatrist being these kind of questions - and I gave her a nonedescript answer which failed to satisfy her. She then approached the subject from another angle, singling out certain events in my life and wishing to know how they made me feel. As I wished to continue our relationship at this point, I naturally did not tell her the truth, just enough of it to keep her intrigued, and added the things she wanted to be true.
The banal truth, in as much there is a single truth, is this: I very rarely get angry, and when I do, several decades in a profession that feeds of secrecy and masks allow me to postpone any reaction I feel. I certainly do not let my actions be dictated by it.
There were a few exceptions to this rule. I still remember every single one, much as I don't care to. The event Judy Barnett named first, the death of my wife Emily, was not one of them, at least not in the sense that she meant it; it was easier for Judy to think of my subsequent actions being caused by anger, of course, and so I told her they were. But even though the death of Dixon's wife Diane was the one time I killed someone not for any strategic benefit, not because I was ordered to or because I saw any advantage to be gained for either myself or the various organizations I belonged to during my life, but simply to satisfy an emotion, that emotion was not anger. After Emily had died, I felt nothing anymore. I thought this petty act of vengeance against the man who had shot her might bring me satisfaction. It did not. I did not feel anything then, either, which was why I left Irina and Sark to their own devices and tried to find my purpose again. I only started to feel something again when I saw the prophecy concerning my daughter - the prophecy that simultanously revealed her existence to me - written in that hand I knew all too well, Rambaldi's hand, and what I felt then was not anger, either. It was renewed hope, and yes, grief for Emily, which I realized would never end, but not anger.
But I was angry two years later, when I heard Katya Derevko's voice on the phone and saw Jack come into my office. It was a simple demonstration of power; Irina's, I thought at the time, though given later events, I can't be sure anymore whether Katya was not playing her own game. Be it as it may, the point of said demonstration was to show me that they - or either of them - could make Jack kill me whenever they wished. It wasn't hard to figure out their leverage; it had to be something concerning Sydney. I understood perfectly; as I told Jack later, when Sydney's life was at stake, I never expected him to act differently.
It still left me in a state of burning anger that slowly started to consume me. This was humiliating. I had thought myself to be above such things, at least at this point in my life. But as immaturely as any teenager, I wished to retaliate. I knew that Irina and Jack had reached some kind of rapprochement during the two years that we believed Sydney to be dead, a state I had only just reached with Jack myself. If it was in her power to spoil it by that little demonstration, well. I could do her a similar favour. A few days later Jack, who was in a rare state of embarrassment and actual guilt, which manifests as concern in him, actually sent a psychiatrist to me, dear Judy Barnett, whom I met for the first time then. The point about Judy was that she worked for the CIA and had, probably assisted by strict orders from superiors, even managed to drag Jack to a few counselling sessions. So I told her, quite deliberately and after enough of a struggle to make it believable, what I wanted her to eventually tell Jack, because after having met Judy, I knew she would not be able to resist sharing this particular information sooner or later. I told her the one thing Irina and myself had agreed to keep silent from him forever. That affair of twenty-five years ago.
As an illustration on why one should never let anger govern one's actions, this could hardly be bettered. My little retaliation backfired on a spectacular level. At the time Judy did tell Jack, I was in prison for something I actually had not done, which was why I had not thought of guarding myself against that particular event, and entirely dependent on Jack for my exculpation. He took great pleasure in telling me he would not help me, let the state kill me for him and then resurrected me. (Jack's anger is as personal as his daughter's; he will never let you die unless it is by his hands if you have personally angered him.) The one person on whom this entire sequence of events had no effect whatsover was Irina, and as for her relationship with Jack, he killed whom he believed to be her as well a few months later, but for a very different reason.
There were, regrettably, a few - a very few - other occasions when I let anger get the better of me, but this was by far the most humiliating. I still find it galling to think about. How do I handle it? By not thinking about it at all, if I can help it.
As for enemies, well, surely I don't have to point out the glaringly obvious: an enemy given to temper tantrums and acting out of rising wrath rarely manages to develop any long term strategies at the same time. Though again, there are rare exceptions, and a thorough knowledge of one's opponent is always advisable.
Or was the question referring to my own anger?
Don't be absurd.
*locked*
Judy Barnett once asked me this question - one of the unfortunate effects of conducting anotherwise pleasant affair with a psychiatrist being these kind of questions - and I gave her a nonedescript answer which failed to satisfy her. She then approached the subject from another angle, singling out certain events in my life and wishing to know how they made me feel. As I wished to continue our relationship at this point, I naturally did not tell her the truth, just enough of it to keep her intrigued, and added the things she wanted to be true.
The banal truth, in as much there is a single truth, is this: I very rarely get angry, and when I do, several decades in a profession that feeds of secrecy and masks allow me to postpone any reaction I feel. I certainly do not let my actions be dictated by it.
There were a few exceptions to this rule. I still remember every single one, much as I don't care to. The event Judy Barnett named first, the death of my wife Emily, was not one of them, at least not in the sense that she meant it; it was easier for Judy to think of my subsequent actions being caused by anger, of course, and so I told her they were. But even though the death of Dixon's wife Diane was the one time I killed someone not for any strategic benefit, not because I was ordered to or because I saw any advantage to be gained for either myself or the various organizations I belonged to during my life, but simply to satisfy an emotion, that emotion was not anger. After Emily had died, I felt nothing anymore. I thought this petty act of vengeance against the man who had shot her might bring me satisfaction. It did not. I did not feel anything then, either, which was why I left Irina and Sark to their own devices and tried to find my purpose again. I only started to feel something again when I saw the prophecy concerning my daughter - the prophecy that simultanously revealed her existence to me - written in that hand I knew all too well, Rambaldi's hand, and what I felt then was not anger, either. It was renewed hope, and yes, grief for Emily, which I realized would never end, but not anger.
But I was angry two years later, when I heard Katya Derevko's voice on the phone and saw Jack come into my office. It was a simple demonstration of power; Irina's, I thought at the time, though given later events, I can't be sure anymore whether Katya was not playing her own game. Be it as it may, the point of said demonstration was to show me that they - or either of them - could make Jack kill me whenever they wished. It wasn't hard to figure out their leverage; it had to be something concerning Sydney. I understood perfectly; as I told Jack later, when Sydney's life was at stake, I never expected him to act differently.
It still left me in a state of burning anger that slowly started to consume me. This was humiliating. I had thought myself to be above such things, at least at this point in my life. But as immaturely as any teenager, I wished to retaliate. I knew that Irina and Jack had reached some kind of rapprochement during the two years that we believed Sydney to be dead, a state I had only just reached with Jack myself. If it was in her power to spoil it by that little demonstration, well. I could do her a similar favour. A few days later Jack, who was in a rare state of embarrassment and actual guilt, which manifests as concern in him, actually sent a psychiatrist to me, dear Judy Barnett, whom I met for the first time then. The point about Judy was that she worked for the CIA and had, probably assisted by strict orders from superiors, even managed to drag Jack to a few counselling sessions. So I told her, quite deliberately and after enough of a struggle to make it believable, what I wanted her to eventually tell Jack, because after having met Judy, I knew she would not be able to resist sharing this particular information sooner or later. I told her the one thing Irina and myself had agreed to keep silent from him forever. That affair of twenty-five years ago.
As an illustration on why one should never let anger govern one's actions, this could hardly be bettered. My little retaliation backfired on a spectacular level. At the time Judy did tell Jack, I was in prison for something I actually had not done, which was why I had not thought of guarding myself against that particular event, and entirely dependent on Jack for my exculpation. He took great pleasure in telling me he would not help me, let the state kill me for him and then resurrected me. (Jack's anger is as personal as his daughter's; he will never let you die unless it is by his hands if you have personally angered him.) The one person on whom this entire sequence of events had no effect whatsover was Irina, and as for her relationship with Jack, he killed whom he believed to be her as well a few months later, but for a very different reason.
There were, regrettably, a few - a very few - other occasions when I let anger get the better of me, but this was by far the most humiliating. I still find it galling to think about. How do I handle it? By not thinking about it at all, if I can help it.