Moment Of Anger
Flying Off the Handle. On one of the many trips back to my hometown in Alaska, I acquired an axe for chopping firewood on my island. The axe had been fairly heavily used but seemed to still be able to do its job.
And so I chopped away, and in one of these chopping sessions – you guessed it – the axe head came off the handle mid swing, and the axe head flew up in the air and landed several feet away from me.
It was in this moment the term “flying off the handle” became more than a metaphor for me. It also gave me a visceral understanding of why flying off the handle is not a good thing.