A couple of days ago, I watched a disturbing video being circulated on social media. Neighbors had an altercation with each other on shoveling of snow. For those who live in snowy countries, they understand that when it snows, you must create a passage using shovels to pile the snow out of the road. I do not know what am saying because I have never had that experience. But we have read or watched movies and documentaries of the whole scenario, so we are on the same page. No? So, this couple was, apparently, shoveling snow on to their neighbor’s property. Like the way you would direct water to your neighbor’s plot. Dirty water. Do not look at me like that. You know it happens most of the times in this country. Raw sewage is directed to rivers and any unoccupied land, or simply on to the neighboring houses or properties. Illegal yes, but who cares? So long as money is the medium through which justice is served, the poor will always be on the receiving end. Poor here means those who are challenged resource-wise and those who are righteous (or practice/yearn for righteousness) since they would not engage in corrupt deals. I digress.

Back to the quarrelling neighbors. Unpleasant words were said. And every time the situation became nastier until it reached boiling point for the owner of the property where this couple was pushing their snow to. He draws the pistol and shoots the poor couple point blank. Without flinching. Goes back to his house and comes out with a gun, kills the two. The explanation accompanying the video being that he went back to his house and shot himself. What a sad story. What a sad day. Could this have been avoided? Absolutely.

Anger.

It controls human beings in such a manner that they lose reasoning and result to whatever the emotions tell them to do at that moment. Scientists came up with the suggested solution of counting 1 to 100 when you find yourself in a situation where your anger is beyond control. Problem is, it is difficult to know when the situation is under control and when it is otherwise.

One bright morning in high school. We enter the Chemistry lab ready to titrate. The drill was very simple. Place your books on the table, then secure some space on the counter which ran around the four walls of the lab. Bunsen burner gas points fixed strategically to accommodate 40 students. Sinks and water points were socially distanced – which made it easy for cheeky students to move around pretending to go wash their test tubes while their main aim was to peek at the results from the bright students. Am well informed that while this is illegal in many parts of the world, in Greece it is encouraged. After marking your territory, you proceed to the inner chambers of the lab where you are handed the tools to use – burette, pipet, test tubes, conical flasks etc. Please do not mistake my naming of these few apparatus to mean that Chemistry was my favorite subject. On the contrary, I hated it from the time we started doing the chemical equations. What is mole concept? That is how I bowed out of sciences and quietly crept into humanities. And there I was welcomed with hugs and kisses and nobody looked at me with judgmental eyes simply because I could not differentiate between alkaline and alkene.

So, back to the bright morning. After rinsing my burette and clipping it on the stand, I went to get the solutions to start the practical. Coming back, I saw a student just unclip the burette and take it to his territory. I was angry. I confronted him, but because he was louder than me, and because I hated causing a scene and attracting the attention of the teacher who would have easily handed me some punishment, I let that anger boil in me, received a new one and came back with all the fury I had. Going to rinse it, I still cannot explain what happened, but the damn apparatus just broke into pieces. We all knew that this thing was very expensive. See, you had to replace any lost items, breakages and any other charges before you could get your leaving certificate at the end of schooling years. I knew my goose had been cooked. With a sympathetic heart, our teacher gave me a new one, but then I almost broke it once more. I remember the HoD (Head of Department) coming to where I was, placing a consoling hand on my shoulder and telling me to cool down and assuring me that all would be well). That day was just bleak – with fellow students touting me that I would never get cleared. Imagine that day I would have broken two burettes due to anger! Though the teacher took my details that day, I was not charged that breakage – I guess the HoD intervened. That student who turned my day upside down is now an engineer.

I recall some students would fight with prefects because they were irked by the instructions given to them. These acts would escalate to other levels which, had the student just walked calmly from the scene to cool off, the outcome would have been better. Students of nowadays are fighting with teachers – that is like fighting with their parents. This is shameful and immoral, leave alone it being criminal.

Once in a while a friend will come to you begging for help. They will give you this well-rehearsed story of how they have gone hungry for a while now (in direct translation from my native language: Sleeping like that. “nikomie ou”) and you can see that the person is just fine. But since you recall that you shall not turn your brother/sister away, you agree to lend them some money with a promise that they would refund end of the month. When you try to remind them of the debt, they become hostile to you. How now? Where is the basket to receive prayer requests? This should be my prayer item over lent this year. That the Lord will remove the heart of stone in them and replace it with a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26).