When we go to the beach here in Florida, after we have picked a spot and set up pur beach chairs, canvas bags with our, book, snack, water, sunscreen, almost inevitably I become aware of a hovering shadow, which materializes into large gull standing less than ten feet away, with a eye trained on my every move. I can honestly say that I have religiously followed the injunction not to feed the critters for years. In fact I can't remember the last time I fed a gull. When I worked as a garbage collector on the Cape, age 18, long before there was recycling or smart landfills (dumps), the locals used to call gulls "flying rats". (I wonder what that made us, since the gulls were just eating all the god-awful crap that we were shallow-burying in mother Earth with zero-sorting.) (Aside: It almost seems unfair these days to be critical of Americans because we are so egregiously "off". I feel like a bully picking on the neighborhood punk who has no friends and nothing going for him. All I'm saying is, animals' bad habits and behavior [such as bears tipping over garbage cans] hold a mirror to our own less than exemplary habits.)
Anyway, back to the inevitable gull. After about an hour, when he finally has me pegged as a waste of his foraging time, he flies off, but not without castigating me scornfully.
If you have never been castigated by a gull, well, it is a withering experience. But my question, that I will return to, is, is he ranting or raging?
Before I answer, I will tell you what he does: He throws his head down dramatically, all the way to his feet and lets forth a raspy, wheezing yogic exhalation of all his contempt and frustration for how he has utterly wasted his valuable time with me. And, to be honest, it hurts, because I take it personally! There is some part of me that would like to share my snack with him, that is to say, I would like to be more accommodating and kind but I know better. If I feed him I will be encouraging him to turn to a life of begging and living off scraps and handouts (junk I wouldn't feed my worst enemy), turning him into a flying rat.
Objectively speaking, his response is over the top. It shows how his emotions have completely gotten the better of him. He is not someone I would want to hang with. As a human, I would call him a hothead, someone to tiptoe around. He isn't just being critical, but there is a barb in his parting fulmination, he is essentially cussing me out.
The original definition of "rant" is speaking loud or boisterously with an emotional edge that loses the thread of rationality. So the implication is that someone who rants is not completely rational, so why listen to them?
I am a member of a men's group where we pass the stick and I have been known to rant in that setting. I find it cathartic and I use ranting as a way of finding my way from A to C. "A" is where I start because there is a lot about the world and humanity that upsets me. Being in control and rational is not an option because it keeps me stuck at point A. I am not above resorting to an emotional rant in certain (controlled or "safe") settings. The other place I will rant is when I am completely alone in nature with the trees and plants and stones as my witness and therapists.
How I feel after a rant is cleansed and clear. Maybe the seagull feels that way after he cusses me out. Nobody knows. Sometimes when I rant, I am cussing-out certain parties who aren't present in our men's circle or in the woods, the ones who, by the way the live or behave or by what they say, yank my chain. But the cathartic part is, my ranting conjures those elements, i.e., the targets of my rant. When I am cussing out people who pollute the earth or violate the social trust or are guilty of a war crime, there is some healing that happens inside me but not just inside me. The healing radiates outward into the setting. In a very small way, it is healing for the world when we get our feelings out "out there", as long as we don't identify with those feelings. We are not our rant. If you identify with your rant then you just feel like sh*t! In a men's group, but also in remote nature, something good happens. In the former setting, heart-centered men who know how to hold space are your witness, and in the latter setting, wise trees and rocks and wild water are our witness, so ranting is cathartic.
By ranting for a supportive witness we are releasing our truth, even if it is a volatile or awkward or angry truth. It doesn't stay trapped inside our hearts or in the pit of our stomach where it can fester and inflame.
So now I want to take up the question of the difference between a rant, which is cathartic and emotionally purging, and raging or becoming a human flame-thrower. It is possible to weaponize our mouths. When we are "lashing out", we are, at least verbally, literally lashing out! Just one step further in that direction, and we are "shooting off our mouth". There is an old and out-dated expression (probably coming out of one of the world wars), for speaking out of turn or in a knee-jerk fashion - "dropping a bombshell". This quaint phrase refers to saying something that is incendiary or explosive that ends any constructive debate. When you drop a bombshell the effect is to stun your company or audience. Ranting is not that. Ranting is letting your emotions weigh into whatever you are discussing, writing or airing.
Ranting comes from Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor", in the phrase "ranting and raving". Not raging, raving. A rant is not violent. But how do we know if we are crossing the line from letting our emotions speak, and releasing rage or injecting toxins into a conversation or the world?
In dreams we see it! Dreams don't mince words. If we are being exposed to a toxin or if we are ourselves sowing poison, the dreams show us what that looks like. In dreams, metaphors become real, which is why in the Western world we avoid recalling our dreams. We would rather jump from falling into oblivious slumber (with our fears and anxieties percolating to the surface as our consciousness thins), to waking up to begin our day without giving a sh*t for where our psyche has been! That is like trying to jump from A to C, with "A" being our tenuous conscious starting point and "C" being the other side of a dreamless night. Obviously I am putting in a plug for ranting, but also for remembering our dreams.
Also what I am saying is, if we find a way to vent our emotional truth, that will take some of the pressure off our dreams to rub our faces in whatever fears, anxieties and anger is hounding us. God knows there is lot to be anxious and angry about these days, and there is a lot of blame flying around. And there is a heightened need for us to be heard and to listen to each other, which means, listening the "the other". The objective other and the other inside ourselves or the shadow.
I was listening to a video-conversation between Sharon Blackie and Sarah Wilson, where Sharon said, "You don't have to become the other but set a place for the other at the table. She said that there was an archetypal role that served an important purpose in bygone times (I think she was talking about European or Western, I believe, Medieval culture), that of the "hospitaler", the one who welcomes the stranger in, to the hearth. ("Get warm, here is shelter, here is soup. . . (and only then), What is your story?") The hospitaler had to be a special kind of person, perhaps someone serving penance or getting another chance in life. He or she would be non-judgmental, able to extend kindness to the stranger, who is, often, in myths and fairytales, the god or a spirit incognito. You want them to come to the table but not feel like it's an ambush or that the food might be laced with poison.
The point is, we want the other, the stranger (who might be us once removed!~), to stay at the table, or to stay by the hearth.
Am I going to invite the seagull to my table? No. Out of question. Because he would eat all the shrimp cocktail in the first few seconds, and then he might cuss me out for not offering him more, but people who rant and rave are actually being more human than those who stare and judge or hold their tongues and act civil, and just think angry thoughts. They might be seagulls in disguise!
I like to think that at OpEd News ranters are welcome and ravers. Not ragers. Not seagulls.
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