Be very angry. It may be the thing that saves us.
By Matlhabeli Molaoli
I think about Marissa G. Franco’s Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help Make — and Keep — Friends a lot. I’ve become a little annoying about recommending it to everyone but it really is so good! Recently, I’ve been meditating on the chapter, “Harmonizing with Anger” where Franco introduces the idea of an ‘anger of hope’ and an ‘anger of despair’ as ways to deal with conflict in friendships.
Imagine. It is a cold Tuesday afternoon in Maseru. You’re supposed to meet a friend at the mall at 13:30, and you’ve worked your day around this, timing down to the last minute when you’d get dropped off at Ha Mafafa and walk downtown. At 13:27 your friend texts that he isn’t coming anymore. The same thing happened last week. How do you react?
An anger of hope might be: I’m so upset that my friend keeps standing me up. Something needs to change if we’re going to continue being friends. It might include raising this with the friend the next time, sharing that you feel hurt and dismissed when he cancels on you at the last minute. In Franco’s words, an anger of hope “admits that we care for the other, even while we’re upset, and thus preserves the inherent worth of the other.” It also “primes us to reflect on what our unmet needs are and how to act to fulfill them” (175).
An anger of despair, on the other hand, “occurs when we have lost hope of healing a relationship.” It wants retribution, not reconciliation. In the scenario above, it might be saying something hurtful to the friend or waiting until he has an important commitment to take revenge. It might go as far as blocking him on all the socials, never raising the difficult conversation about how you have been hurt.
How might we scale this up to think about addressing conflict with hope or despair at the level of our society? Mohlala, think of the last time you went to a government office and were turned away with a half-hearted “Rona rea luncheng, ausi.” Kapa ha batho ba k’hamphani e itseng ea likhokahanyo tsa mahlale ba u nyemotsa feela ha u fihla liofising tsa bona u lo batla litšebeletso. Or at the bank, when the teller took one look at you and decided you’re not worth their full attention. Or when you decide to “support local” but the things you paid for never get delivered. My modest aim with this reflection is to invite you to think with me about the potential for anger to transform our communities. What might we gain by confronting the many conflicts and frictions we face head-on?
It’s far worse in government offices. Remember the sheer desperation at the height of the ongoing passport crisis, and all the ways we had to beg and grovel just to see someone who would hear our case for an expedited application? My friend has a funny and heartbreaking story about going to one such office and being told to wait, along with a few others, outside the manager’s office. (Because half of being in Lesotho is waiting. Waiting for a new job post. Waiting for old, moth-eaten promises of prosperity. Waiting for your WhatsApp call to stop “Reconnecting…”) Desperate and patient, my friend joined the queue outside the manager’s office and saw the manager come in and out. She could only chuckle when someone else announced that the manager she could see with her own eyes was, in fact, not in the office that day.
There’s such a lack of care in Lesotho. Hee, rea telloa ebile rea tellana. There’s no ethic of love, not least in the places where we look to for help when we’re at our lowest. Think of all the times a nurse has rudely dismissed you or shouted at someone old enough to be your mother, all the times you haven’t been thought of, attended to. These daily indignities — on top of poverty, of chronic unemployment, of dreams unfulfilled — are wearing away at the soul of our people. The wounds we experience at the hands of the state and one another add up over lifetimes and generations — death by a thousand papercuts. We are so weary.
More than this, I worry that we’ve come to expect nothing more from one another. We aren’t nearly angry enough at the structural and relational neglect we’re facing. I’m heartbroken because this means, at some level, we don’t think we deserve any better. For contrast, think of all the times our neighbors next door (rightfully!) protest when the government hasn’t delivered on its promises. Or, when young people in Kenya brought the government to a standstill this winter? I worry that we are too polite for our good. We will “ho tla loka” our way into a life of tepid mediocrity and then get mad when anyone dares to demand better. No, to really love one another (in that expansive, radical, bell hooks way), we have to demand better of each other. We must believe that we are capable of good and expect it from one another. So that when we inevitably fall short of standards of business etiquette and social respect, we can rest knowing that our standards were ambitious anyway.
Anger, at the collective level, remains a foreign emotion right now. Perhaps we need to learn how to nurture an anger of hope so we can do the important work of dreaming up a different future. I don’t write this lightly. I know that the energy to dream up a different world can feel so far out of reach when every day is a struggle for daily bread. When survival is the work of the day, when do we get the strength to stir up anger about our circumstances? Maybe one where no one goes to bed hungry and we all have access to the bounty of the country. One where dreams are possible.
A liturgy for an anger of hope.
May your anger flow out of a holy place. May you dare to imagine better for yourself, for us, for us all. May you recognize when your dignity has been violated, and Borrow the courage to correct it. To remind yourself that you, You are worthy of beautiful things. We are deserving of care and respect and attention. I bless you to ignite a fiery rage against the order of the world. May your anger be righteous. This hot thing brewing in your chest, this lump in your throat, This fury, this is hope, too. This is you demanding better, Commanding the future to not be a bleaker version of today. Yes, I bless your audacity to imagine a different world. And your efforts to drag it here, now. Go. Be angry. Be very angry.