Today’s Encounter with the Incredible Hulk

Something happened this morning while walking my dog Nyla, that has been on my mind ever since. Nyla and I were crossing the main, busy. 6-lane road by where we live. We were walking north in the crosswalk, while two teenage boys and one teenage girl were walking in the opposite direction towards us. Blocking the crosswalk, right dead in the middle, was the front of a Greyhound bus. This bus was so far forward that it was a little into the main intersection. Nyla and I began to walk around it, the same time the teenagers were doing the same. The one boy, being a teenage dofus, started acting like a goof ball and tried to climb up on the bus’s front. The bus driver along with the teenage girl were laughing at the boy. I saw the bus driver’s face…he was amused with the antics of this dorky teenager. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the other teenage boy jumped up to the window and started pounding it with his fist, giving the bus driver the middle finger, and screaming “F$#& You!” about three times. The poor bus driver, his face went from jolly and laughing to pure fear and anger in a matter of two seconds. I even got a little scared…it was like someone set a cherry bomb off right next to me. What the…? What just happened? I don’t get it. Nyla really freaked out when this occurred too and I was trying to hold her from dodging into traffic while crossing this huge road.

It’s incredible to me how anger is actually an entity. It has force and energy to it. It slammed into the bus driver, and parts of that impact went flying at me. Even Nyla felt it. This poor young man just carries this anger with him, and little things like a bus blocking the crosswalk can cause the anger to erupt like a volcano. Laughter and love don’t do that. They have a different energy. They kind of float and fly around, they’re more soft and airy—like when the first teenage boy, his girlfriend, and the bus driver were laughing.

I recently saw the Incredible Hulk movie. I’m not one for superheros or comic book stuff, but this was an excellent movie! After viewing it, I couldn’t help but think how much it related to the principles of Yoga. Ed Norton, who plays the Hulk, even practices meditation and capoeira (watch the YouTube movie at the end of this post for a beautiful depiction of capoeira). Throughout the movie he is searching for a way to get rid of the Hulk. He doesn’t want it. When he turns into the Hulk, his lovely girlfriend, played by Liv Tyler, goes up to him and says “I know you’re in there.”

The Hulk, my friends, is that dark part of our nature…anger, jealousy, fear. We, just like Bruce Banner, can not get rid of it…the key is to begin to understand it, and control it. It’s only an entity that takes over us–it’s not us, we’re still in there–like Liv Tyler said!