Once there was a turtle who was friends with two geese. The geese invited the turtle to come visit their home. “How can I get there?” he asked. “I don’t fly.” The geese told him that if he held onto the middle of a stick with his mouth, they would happily carry either end of the stick and they would fly him there. The turtle agreed.
Along the way, the two geese and turtle passed above some children who were playing. The children laughed at such a sight. They began to mock the turtle for thinking he could fly. The turtle became furious. “How dare they say those things! They shouldn’t talk to me like that!” he thought. And just in the moment when he opened his mouth to set the children straight – he plummeted from the sky to his death.
The turtle did not expect the reality that occurred; instead, he desired that the children should have acted differently than they did. He felt disrespected and acted out of anger; yet his angry action did nothing to actually help teach the children a better path. You might view the turtle as foolish, but every time you act out of anger at those who do not behave according to your expectations, you are no different than the turtle. When your intentions are to “set others straight” through anger, you are like the turtle who did not know how his desire to change reality would only hurt himself.
Work to align your expectations with reality. That doesn’t mean you have to expect the worst of everyone, but it does mean to expect that people are likely to act in the way that they have shown you they will act. The more prepared you are for reality, the better your chances are of handling it well. Broaden your expectations of the potential responses people might give you. Sometimes people are kind, and sometimes others’ struggles lead them to being not-so-kind. You cannot “pound others” into thinking differently. Your anger is much more likely to hurt yourself than it is to ever hurt others. If your goal is to teach others to act differently, then patience and compassion are significantly better tools to use than anger. As the Buddha taught, “Anger cannot be overcome with anger, but only by love.”