Hell hath no fury...

Have you ever woken up to a morning feeling an inexplicable, unwarranted sense of anger? I don’t mean the beat-the-living-daylights-out-of-someone sort of rage (or for those more philanthropic, favouring a more masochistic demonstration of fury, the pull-your-hair-out-by-the-roots variety).
To put in a less poetic form, I don’t mean the kind of anger where you can identify who should be at the receiving end or even why someone should be waiting to hear from you. I mean the anger (I think Indignation is word I’m looking for) that is more defensive, fuelled by a general feeling of being wronged, the one that inspires the me-against-the-world sentiment.
(Just to avoid any confusion regarding the identification of this mysterious emotion, I don’t mean the grumpiness of waking up on the wrong side of the bed either.)

Setting aside the why of such an unpleasant emotion on a bright sunny day, what I want to highlight is the effect of such seemingly misplaced ire. If you are able to keep that feeling in check, meaning to say, not find an easy prey, you’ll notice that you go about your day with increased fervour if you may, finding that you do more and better than you would on a regular day.

If you look at it, it really isn’t a rare phenomenon. It isn’t even limited to just anger. All hostile emotions, frustration, hurt, pain, inspire greater motivation, impel us to do better if only to get back at that feeling. Look around, most great works of art, music or literature come to life when the creator is at his lowest best.
Take Lance Armstrong for example, who really brings to life the point I’m trying to make when he says: ‘Once someone asked me what pleasure I got out of riding my bike for so long. "Pleasure?” I asked. "I don't understand the question. I didn't do it for pleasure. I did it for pain".’

So what exactly is happening here? A negative emotion seems to be yielding positive results, casting doubts on its infamous capabilities. Is something amiss here?
Well, not quite. If you sit down and dissect the occurrence, you see that it’s pretty simple actually, just a variation of survival of the fittest, the strongest. It’s nothing but a case of one emotion overwhelming all the rest. Anger simply bulldozes through the myriad of other feelings you may be having at the time: fear, pain, anxiety, doubt.
You’re probably wondering right about now, why there aren’t any ‘good’ emotions in that list above. Well, if you look closely you’ll see all the negative emotions transform to a level of (drumroll)... Anger.
And that, is the where this universal emotion draws all it’s power from. And by extension, where you can draw power from. Assuming of course you choose to, or you’ll find the emotion drawing its power from you.

Not convinced? Alright, think of the last time you were hurt, didn’t you project some degree of anger at the person or object you identified as being responsible? When you were in pain, didn’t you angrily pick yourself up by the bootstraps just to get back at the pain, show it what you're made of? Didn’t you feel frustrated at the uncertainty you felt in some situation?
So you see, all roads lead to our notorious star of the show.

As for the power of anger, even conventional wisdom has it documented, albeit with a little more emphasis on the impact on the fairer sex (that you really can’t argue with):
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
(Especially for the benefit of visitors that don’t agree with the thoughts in this post. :P Just kidding!)