Anger Management in the Metropolis

Life in the city is full of adventure, excitement—and rudeness. Unfortunately, crowding can bring out the worst in people and animals.

In a famous experiment, rats were put in a crowded cage to see what would happen. The rats in this cage were so crowded together that they were literally standing whisker to whisker. After spending a long time in this environment, the rats started going nuts. They were fighting and killing each other. Some practiced cannibalism. Males and females didn’t want to mate and when females did get pregnant they often abandoned or abused their children.

In the modern metropolis, as well as in other places around the world, people have also been known to behave in, well, somewhat impolite ways. All one has to do is read the daily news headlines to know what I’m talking about.

How can you live in a crowded, urban environment and avoid fighting, killing, or like the rats in the experiment, eating other people? Here are some suggestions for how to deal with life in the modern metropolis when things get too stressful.

Pretend you’re on Mars. While gallivanting around town, remain detached. One way of doing this is to imagine yourself looking at everyone as if you were peering down through a telescope from Mars. Pretty soon everybody looks like a bunch of ants. Why get overheated about tiny insects?

Get plenty of hugs. Surround yourself with caring people. Try to get at least one hug per day from your significant other, your Aunt Ethel, or a good friend. The more you feel the love, the less the stings and arrows of outrageous fortune will upset you. Also potentially troublesome people will see that rosy “I’m getting my quota of hugs” aura and will be less likely to target you.

Smile a lot. A psychologist once did an experiment in which he wired subjects up to measure their skin temperature and heart beat. When he asked the subjects to smile, he found that their skin temperature and heartbeat went down; when he directed them to frown, he found that their skin temperature and heartbeat went up. “Smile and the world smiles with you,” is the title of a song from the 1940s. There may be some truth to the song after all. Smiling may become a buffer that keeps negative people away.

Stick out your tongue. Humor can be a wonderful way to deal with the adversity of urban life. Let’s say you have a bully breathing down your neck at work, the kind of person who makes sure to point out your every mistake. “Oh, my God,” the bully says, “Did you hear what you just said? You just said ‘nauseous’ instead of ‘nauseated.’ Don’t you know the rules of grammar?” You stick out our tongue, cross your eyes, and laugh like a chimpanzee.

“You’re an idiot,” the bully says.

You continue to be an idiot until he leaves.