What if...?

What if, again… what if?

I've been circling around aggression — around my own aggression.

Since the burden of how to carry my stories has fallen away, I feel free enough to think again.

What if…

What if what I have understood as aggression is not the driving force at all?

I am not afraid of aggression. But facing what might actually be my fuel is frightening.

...

And when I begin to examine this thought as a working hypothesis, the details start to integrate.

Aggression is not the source, but a tool - a force available when necessary.

Then the more important question becomes: what governs it? What makes me increase the force, reduce it, or pause altogether?

Perhaps something that provides both the direction and the governing principle.

I am not yet sure how to name it but it would be fuel and governing principle - somehow both.

Then what I have been trying to understand as regulated aggression might be more precisely described as governed aggression.

When governed, aggression can change direction: the force that would move me forward becomes the force with which I hold myself back.

Perhaps the guilt belonged to this gray zone of governance - where both acting and restraining myself carried the possibility of harm, and there was no guarantee that I had chosen the right proportion.

Let me share with you a short case as an illustration — to make the concept clearer.

Years ago, on a Head and Neck Surgery ward, the nurses called me to mobilize a patient because, as they said, he was too passive.

When I entered the room, it was clear that he was dying. He was severely dyspnoeic, barely responsive, and difficult to reach. He answered me only very slowly.

I placed a wet towel gently on his forehead and stroked it for a moment.

He whispered, "Thank you."

Then I went back to the nurses' room, furious.

"How dare you? This man is dying. How dare you make a call to interrupt his process?" And so forth. I was furious — how dare they...

I also told them that if they wanted to report me for refusing to treat a patient, they should do it.

They just stared at me. No words, no excuses, nothing.

So I left.

I wasn't proud of this situation. For a long time, it tortured me to realize how completely I had lost control. I still couldn't understand how it had happened. And yet, if I could return to that moment, I don't think I would act differently.

That was the loop. I kept returning to the contrast between the beautiful fragility of the moment with the patient and the intensity of my reaction immediately afterward. I could neither undo what had happened internally nor find a frame that could hold both.

During all my years in the hospital, I raised my voice four times. Twice it was because of  patient situation. This was one of them.

But now another layer has appeared, and something in that loop has loosened.

Because before the confrontation, there had been an encounter.

A dying man, in an eight-bed hospital room. A wet towel on his forehead, a gentle touch and his whispered words: "Thank you."

What a privilege it was to be there, in that fragment of his ending time, and to be allowed to make such a small gesture.

I think this is what I could not understand before. The moment itself had weight. It deserved to be protected.

And perhaps this is why the force that followed was so great. Not because aggression was the point, but because something in me recognized a boundary that should not be crossed.

Cost what it may - even if the cost is my own discipline.

I can still examine whether the force was proportionate. But I no longer need to deny why it appeared. The learning point about myself may be in the intensity: what was I protecting that invited this force? Perhaps the lifecycle.

Some moments ask for gentleness. Some ask for restraint. And some may ask us to stand at the boundary with everything we have.