Songs that run through our heads. The soundtracks of our lives.

As a songwriter, I’m fortunate in that if no song is right at the time, I can make up my own. But the radio in my head is non-partisan. My own songs take up just a fraction of that air time.

For instance, for the past few days, I can’t get Ani Defranco‘s “I’m Not Angry Anymore” out of my head. It just keeps going around and around. Very recently, I’ve decided not to be angry anymore, and now all of a sudden it’s beginning to feel like a big dirt cloud has lifted and everything’s going to be ok.

So, in my new minus-the-anger state, my future ex and I are getting along much better. We walked arm-in-arm around the lake yesterday. I know what you’re thinkingJ but no, the marriage is over for sure. The upside though is, we are acting more like very good friends. We have pretty much grown up together.

About a year ago, I listened to a very powerful book on tape; Eckert Tolle’s “The Power of Now.” In “The Power of Now” Tolle talks about anger, and other negative emotions, as part of an entity separate from ourselves. He refers to it as “the pain body.”

He says when people get caught up in the swirl of the pain body, those negative emotions propagate and before you know it, you’re trapped in that pain body, and you identify with it. Even though you think it’s “you”, it’s not. It’s a separate, very destructive entity to it’s host and others.

This past year I’ve found it pretty easy to get sucked up into that pain body. Effortless almost!

But it truly hasn’t been doing me or anyone else any good. So, enough now.