While driving in Tucson recently, at a point where traffic merges, I slowed to allow a car from the left lane (who was driving aggressively) to merge ahead of me, to which he did, while offering me an obscene gesture for my courtesy. Naturally, I was somewhat irritated, but as I pondered his actions, I considered that his apparent anger must come at some cost in his life. As I pondered his behavior and my irritation to his actions, it occurred to me that holding on to my irritation could also come at a cost to me. Along these lines, the ancient Roman Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC– 65 AD) noted, “Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.” Anger is “an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”
