The Daily Stoic

You try to turn on your television, only to find that the batteries in the remote are dead and no one bothered to replace them. Your computer freezes in the middle of finishing something important and you lose hours of work. You’re running late for your child’s soccer game because they’ve been fooling around instead of getting ready to play. You’re trying to change lanes on the freeway, but another driver is too close to your car and won’t give you room to maneuver. And the worse, they flip you off. What’s the natural response to all of these situations? To get angry. But, remember, to the Stoics, our “natural” instincts and emotions were something to always question. And sometimes, something to regard with outright skepticism. “The cause of anger is the sense of having been wronged,” Seneca wrote, “but one ought not trust this sense. Don’t make your move right away, even against what seems overt and plain; sometimes false things give the appearance of truth.”  Not everyone has an “anger problem” but anger is