The card my husband gave me for my birthday this year was a humorous one, and it came complete with a nice little button badge.
The badge reads:
“If you’re not pissed off, you’re not paying attention.”
Says it all really. We ignore so many things we ought to be angry or upset about in life; the big things, like war and famine, and the little things like work and friends and so on. We tune them out, constantly, to keep some sort of equilibrium, or to ensure we don’t turn into raving loonies.
I’m paying attention and boy, am I pissed off. With personal and global things. But because I am a venial and fallible human being, mainly with the personal. I’d like to think it’s because on some level I recognise that I have some chance of affecting the personal with a hope of changing things for the better.
But I SO want to wear my badge to work on Thursday…Is that so very bad of me??
Zen and the Art of Tightrope Walking 
Nope! Just wear the badge!!!
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I don’t mind – but I don’t know about those others at work. (On the other hand, you may be motivating them to get their own badges:))
Licks n wags,
Oorvi
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I’m glad I didn’t; I had a much better morning than expected.
As i work in(but not for) a high school I suspect such a badge would be seen as subversive at best.
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If wearing the badge is accompanied with an attitude of being pissed off, then no. If it is worn with a big sense of humour, then yes. Personal conflict is more about “inner stuff” than it is about “outer stuff”. Why are you pissed off? In looking outward, find the projection so that you can follow it back to discover the real reason for being pissed off.
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I think it comes down to a feeling of being powerless to control the things that get imposed upon me in the course of work. I would have worn it with a humorous smile, but I am glad I didn’t. It turned out to be a better morning by far, by grace rather than by anyone’s actions. Maybe my careful planning of a lesson helped; I also saw fit to change the grade of one student who had been a bother the previous days but who came good on the last day. I hope he was delighted to get his grade bumped up as a result of a morning’s harder work, and that he will believe in future that hard work is sometimes rewarded and that people do mean what they say. I didn’t give him his new certficate, my boss did, but I hope he will remember the lesson and learn from it(I don’t mean my English lesson)
I often feel that there is a subversive imp in my make-up that itches to emerge and create havoc.
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I love that subversive imp in you, Viv! I have one too, it makes life interesting!!! As for the badge, I think you chose wisely not to wear it to a school work environment, just because of the language. How old are your students? Could you not make another badge, or teach the point, by substituting the word “angry” for “pissed off”?
I had never heard that expression before. I will DEFINITELY use it in my couples counseling!
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My students are between 11 and 25, through the year but the hight school is between 14 and 18.
Pissed in English english means very drunk; pissed off means angry. It confuses students who have watched a lot of American films!
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