I coached youth baseball for many years, and I had a theory.
Anger trumps fear.
When a young player stepped into the batter’s box afraid of striking out, sometimes I’d deliberately try to make him angry.
Not because I wanted him upset with me.
But because I knew what fear could do.
Fear makes you hesitate. It makes you second-guess yourself. It makes you worry more about failing than succeeding.
Anger, on the other hand, can make you forget you’re afraid.
A frightened kid worries about striking out.
An angry kid wants to hit the ball.
And sometimes that little change in attitude made all the difference.
It wasn’t a perfect coaching strategy. But I saw it work.
Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about that philosophy.
Because if anger can overcome fear, it raises an interesting question.
What trumps anger?
I think I finally know.
Love.
We live in a world that seems increasingly comfortable with anger.
We’re encouraged to establish boundaries. Protect our peace. Remove people who disturb it.
And sometimes that’s exactly what we need to do.
Anger can be useful.
It can help us recognize when we’ve been mistreated. It can give us the courage to stand up for ourselves. It can help us walk away from situations we shouldn’t remain in.
Just like that frightened kid in the batter’s box, sometimes anger gives us the strength to do something we were afraid to do.
But here’s what I’ve started wondering.
What happens when anger stops being something that helps us get through a difficult moment and becomes the thing that determines how we live?
What happens when the anger that gave us the courage to walk away becomes the reason we can never reconsider walking back?
I’ve experienced plenty of anger during my estrangement.
Anger over things that were said.
Anger over things that weren’t said.
Anger over misunderstandings I haven’t had the opportunity to correct.
And sometimes anger over the simple fact that things aren’t the way I wish they were.
I don’t think that makes me unusual.
I think it makes me human.
But I also know something else.
I love my son more than I’m angry with him.
And that matters.
Because if I allowed anger to make every decision, I’d probably make some very different ones.
I might decide I’m done.
I might stop caring.
I might convince myself that the relationship isn’t worth the pain.
But love keeps interrupting those thoughts.
Love reminds me that my son is more than the things I’m upset about.
Love reminds me that our relationship is bigger than the worst moments in it.
And love reminds me that I can be hurt by someone without wanting to hurt them back.
Now, I don’t believe love means pretending nothing happened.
It doesn’t mean accepting mistreatment.
It doesn’t mean abandoning boundaries or ignoring genuine pain.
And it certainly doesn’t mean that someone who chooses no contact is incapable of love.
Sometimes people love each other and still need distance.
But I wonder whether we sometimes give anger more authority than it deserves.
Anger can tell us something is wrong.
It can’t always tell us what would make things right.
That’s a job for something deeper.
Patience.
Compassion.
Humility.
Forgiveness.
Love.
And sometimes love asks us to do something much harder than getting angry.
It asks us to reconsider.
To listen.
To acknowledge that someone else’s experience might be different from our own.
To accept that we may have contributed to the very pain we’re angry about.
That’s not weakness.
That may require more courage than anger ever did.
There’s another part of my old coaching philosophy that I’ve been thinking about.
I used to tell my players that the day I stopped getting on them was the day they should start worrying.
Because as long as I was coaching them, challenging them, and pushing them to improve, it meant I believed in them.
The real danger wasn’t that I might get frustrated.
It was that I might stop caring.
And maybe that’s true of relationships, too.
The opposite of love isn’t necessarily anger. Sometimes it’s indifference.
You can be furious with someone and still love them deeply.
You can disagree with someone and still want them in your life.
You can be disappointed in someone without giving up on who they might become.
Anger and love aren’t mutually exclusive.
But when they’re both present, one of them eventually has to lead.
I don’t know what the future holds for my son and me.
I don’t know whether we’ll ever have the conversations I hope we’ll have.
And I don’t know whether the love I feel will ever be enough to help repair what’s been broken.
Love doesn’t guarantee reconciliation.
It takes more than one person to rebuild a relationship.
But I do get to decide what governs my side of it.
And I don’t want that to be anger.
I spent years teaching young baseball players that anger could help them overcome fear.
Maybe that was a useful lesson for a baseball game.
But life has taught me something bigger.
Fear makes us retreat.
Anger makes us fight.
Love gives us a reason to do something harder than either.
It gives us a reason to leave the door open.
Not because the hurt wasn’t real.
Not because the anger wasn’t justified.
But because the person on the other side of that door still matters.
I used to believe anger was the answer to fear.
Maybe sometimes it was.
But anger was never supposed to be the destination.
And I’ve come to believe there’s something stronger.
Love doesn’t always make anger disappear.
It just refuses to let anger have the final word.
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