Between something happening and your reaction, there's a small gap. Most of the time we miss it and snap straight to the response. Seneca, writing on anger, noticed that the first jolt of feeling isn't fully in our control, but what we do next is. Anger grows when we feed it with the next thought and the next. A pause starves it. You don't have to be a calm person by nature to do this. You just have to find that gap once today, take one breath inside it, and let your better self answer instead of your reflex. That single space is where freedom lives.

Inspired by the old idea of the pause before reaction. Written by Ugo Charles.