The Backpack

Chapter 24

“What are you two talking about now?” Sofia asked as she returned to Buddy and Jon's row. As crew lead, she enjoyed taking the time on long flights to walk the aisle and simply connect with passengers, especially her friends.

Buddy smiled up at Sofia. “Jon was starting to explain to me how his wife ‘made him mad' this morning.”

Sofia knew where this conversation was going. She had heard Buddy say on more than one occasion that “‘You make me so angry' is the most misused phrase on the planet.” It was a truth she had shared with many others herself.

Jon ignored Sofia for the moment because he was still processing Buddy's spilled-backpack scenario. “Okay, Buddy, so what you are saying with your not‐so‐hypothetical hypothetical is that if I become angry and that anger pours out, it is because the anger was already inside me. Well of course that makes sense. I am the one defending myself with my anger, so it comes from me.”

Buddy briefly recapped the backpack illustration to get Sofia up to speed in the conversation. Then he turned back to Jon, who was looking rather impatient.

“Hmm. No, that's not quite it,” Buddy replied. “I am saying that all of the stuff spilled out hither, thither, and yon on the floor is only dressed up to look like anger. It is actually a whole mess of broken beliefs and mislabeled emotions. Anger is the emotion that the person who owns the backpack chooses to display, consciously or not, because of that mess. That anger is almost always a secondary ...