There are so many times when anger and fear take the lead in our reaction to things. Both big picture, world events and things much more personal and closer to home, can trigger these emotions. We can find ourselves wishing ill towards others, we can find ourselves holding a hard knot of fury, so intense that it becomes a physical sensation.

It’s easy to realize that those emotions color our attitudes. We perseverate on the issue or the person or the problem, it cycles through our thinking as regularly as our breathing. I find that it invades my sleep, with dreams that wake me feeling anxious and unrested.

Yet, if we stop, and really allow ourselves to reflect, we realize that what that truly means is that we have given over our own power to the issue or the person or the situation. We are permitting, even enabling, something outside of ourselves to control both our emotions and our emotional wellbeing.

What if we were to work on changing that dynamic? What if we were to spend a few minutes thinking about our own peace, our own light? What if we took a few more minutes and wishing for peace and light, safety and joy for the people we care about the most? And if, even beyond that, we sent that energy beyond to whatever greater group resonates with us?

I am not suggesting that we need to, or should, return to a world of “peace, love and rock and roll.” What I am suggesting is that bringing a focus of true lovingkindness to ourselves, and perhaps to others, can help us to move past our anger and frustration. It can help us to see that the only thing we can truly control is our own emotions. We can choose, with some conscious intent, what those emotions are and we can choose, with the same conscious intent, to acknowledge them and then let them go.

I have spent a lot of my life holding onto, and not expressing, difficult emotions. I have held onto anger and disappointment, frustration and betrayal. My expectations of other people have not always been met and their behavior towards me has, sometimes, been hurtful. Maybe you, like me, can catalogue every one of those moments and relive all of that pain. And maybe you, like me, can work to find ways to let it go, to let the glow of kindness and healing lead us to truly filling our full hearts.