My toddler’s favorite book right now is Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak. In Where the Wild Things Are, we meet Max. Dressed up in his wolf suit, Max creates mischief of one kind (he ties a sheet into knots and nails it to the wall to make a clothesline). And another (Max leaps off the stairs, chasing the family dog with a fork). So his mother calls him “WILD THING.”
Max doesn’t like it when his mother calls him “WILD THING.” Angry, he responds, “I’LL EAT YOU UP!” In response, his mother sends him to his room without eating his supper.
And then the magic happens.
Max imagines a forest growing in his room. An ocean tumbles by with a private boat for Max, and he sails off “through night and day, and in and out of weeks, and almost over a year, to where the wild things are.”
When Max arrives at the place where the wild things are, they roar their terrible roars and gnash their terrible teeth and roll their terrible eyes and show their terrible claws. But Max is not afraid. Instead, he tames them with his magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once, and they are frightened and call him the most wild thing of all. They make him king of all wild things.
After a while, Max gets tired of being king of all things and decides to travel back to the place where someone loves him best of all. When he gets back, his supper is waiting for him. And it is still hot.
Litigation can be an angry place. Have you ever encountered a lawyer—or a judge or a client—whose behavior made you angry? How did you respond? Has your behavior made someone else angry? How did you respond?
Like my toddler, I love this story. Here’s what it teaches me about dealing with anger:
- Name calling usually doesn’t go over very well. It often makes people angry and escalates the problem.
- People act in accordance with the labels we put on them. Instead of viewing people in their worst light (“WILD THING”), view people in their best light. Reframe what you see. (“I know you’re the kind of person who really cares about being fair, courteous, the safety of the family dog, etc. . . .”)
- Anger is okay. It gives us energy to solve the problem.
- When we’re angry, removing ourselves from the situation and allowing our imaginations to wander freely can allow us to recover our self-possession.
- When we are in possession of ourselves, we know who we are and how we want to act—a powerful place to be.
Thank you, Maurice Sendak, for giving us this wonderful story.
For all you Maurice Sendak fans out there, click here to see an illustrated recording of an interview by Terri Gross of Mr. Sendak, “in love with the world,” before he died. You will be glad you did.