Wait For It To Settle | Practice Gentleness Instead Of Anger

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2:26Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

3:06Wait for it to settle. In the demands of daily life, in the immediacy of a heightened moment, in the pincering crush of competing interests, we rarely make good decisions. Whether it's because we don't have all the information or we are biased by impressions or we are blinded by emotions, it doesn't really matter. What matters is the virtuousness of the decisions that we make. In one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's best short stories, The Four Fists, he talks about a man who is infatuated with a married woman. For the next week, Samuel was in a nervous turmoil, Fitzgerald writes. Some persistently rational strain warned him that at the bottom, he and Marjorie had little in common, but in such cases there is usually so much mud in the water that one can seldom see the bottom.

3:53Misled by his impulses, the clarity would in this case only come later, in the shock of a fist to the face from the woman's husband. As it happens, this metaphor of muddy water was used by both the Buddhists and the Stoics. Epictetus says that we have to let the water in the bowl settle. The Buddhists say that we have to let the silt come to rest at the bottom of the glass. Only then can we see through it. Only then will we achieve clarity. Right now, perhaps you have some big decision in front of you, or you are feeling a rush of excitement to do something rash. Maybe you're caught up in a trend or a controversy.

4:30Maybe your friends have convinced you that it's exciting or romantic or meant to be. Maybe it's a world of pain dressed up as a moment of pleasure. The best thing you can do, according to the Stoics and the Buddhists and F. Scott Fitzgerald, this to wait a little bit. Let things settle. Let gravity do some sorting for you. Let stillness do its work. Then and only then can you make the right call.

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6:03Practice gentleness instead of anger. It's easy to imagine Marcus Aurelius losing his temper. His responsibilities were vast and his job required him to work with many frustrating, difficult people. As such, he had an acute sense of the problem of anger, knowing just how counterproductive it can be and how miserable it can make its users. He often repeated a simple exercise designed to preserve goodwill for others by simply replacing anger with gentleness. We can't allow ourselves to desert our goodwill, and we must remind ourselves that no one makes mistakes willingly. Each time you feel anger this week, remember Marcus, and see how you might replace it with gentleness.

6:42And write some examples down. This is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, 366 Days of Writing on Reflection in the Art of Living. I think I'm on my fourth or my fifth way through the book. Every day I do the little prompt. For instance, tomorrow's prompt is, to what service am I committed? Can I mind my own business and not be distracted? This is a great question to meditate on each day and write about. And we have some quotes here from Marcus. As you move forward along the path of reason, people will stand in your way. They will never be able to keep you from doing what's sound, so don't let them knock out your goodwill.

7:21Keep a steady watch on both fronts, not only for well-based judgments and actions, but also for gentleness with those who would obstruct our path or create difficulties. For getting angry is a weakness, just as much as abandoning the task or surrendering to panic. That's Marcus Aurelius' Meditations 11.9. Then in Meditations 7.6.3, he quotes Plato. As Plato said, every soul is deprived of truth against its will. The same holds true for justice, self-control, and goodwill to others, every similar virtue. It's essential to constantly keep this in your mind, for it will make you more gentle for all.

7:59And finally, Meditations 1118, he says, Keep this thought handy when you feel a fit of rage coming on. It's not manly to be enraged. Rather, gentleness and civility are more human and therefore manlier. A real man doesn't give way to anger or discontent. such a person has strength, courage, and endurance. So let's put aside these sort of gender preconceptions, because the Stoics are obviously from a long, long time ago. But I think he's saying it's not impressive to lose your temper, to be aggressive, to be mean, to be domineering, to destroy or dunk or own on someone. He's saying that the most impressive thing is to keep under the body, as the Bible says, to keep in self-control, to not lose your temper.

8:46Because to lose your temper is almost invariably to make the situation worse. Not only is it impotent and pointless and never solves the problem, but it usually makes things worse. That's another thing Marcus says. You know, he says how much worse the consequences of anger are than the things that caused it. And I've said this before, but like, I've never lost my temper and then felt so glad that I did that. Actually, just yesterday, I was going back and forth with this person that we hired to do something, a very expensive person. And they'd been like jerking us around for months. And, you know, I finally laid out in very clear, simple language, this is what I want.

9:28this is what has to happen stop wasting our time and then three seconds later they responded like well actually blah blah blah blah let's get on the phone and discuss and i've said this before but i hate getting on the phone especially with things that don't need to be gotten on the phone about um and so i was you know there's part of me that wanted to write this really angry email and instead instead of doing that instead of calling this person and yelling with them I called someone I work with and I said, look, I'm calling you instead of yelling at this person. Here's where I am. Here's what I want.

10:02It's obvious that I'm upset. This person knows I'm upset. Why don't you call them and just work out a solution so we never have to talk about this again, right? Just make this go away. Solve it. I don't need to get the last word here. I just want this to go away. And that's how I try to solve things that are upsetting to me. And I try to have some self-awareness of like, I know what I'm going to do is this. And then what they're going to do is this. And then I'm going to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I will be unhappy. And this person probably won't feel any of it because if they were aware of what's happening, we wouldn't be in this mess to begin with.

10:39So that's how I try to think about it. You want to catch yourself before you go through it. You want to use it as an opportunity for the next level. I'm not quite there, as Marcus is saying. Try to respond with gentleness. Where is this person coming from? And that's actually something that I talked about with my partner. We were like, there's got to be something going on with this person because it doesn't make any sense. This is ridiculous. And I suspect that is maybe they're going through a divorce. Maybe their kid is sick. Maybe their business is falling apart. Just you don't know what people are going through.

11:14So to scream at them and yell at them, not only is it probably not going to solve anything, but they're probably overwhelmed already and that's why you're in this mess. So take a minute. Remember, it's more impressive to be controlled. You don't have to get the last word. You don't have to get angry. Solve the problem. Move on. Practice gentleness instead of anger.

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