Anger feels like it arrives fully formed, but Seneca noticed it has a beginning we can catch. There is a moment between the spark and the action, and in that moment we are still free. The best defense against anger, he wrote, is delay, giving the heat time to cool before it speaks for us. You don't have to deny that you're upset. You only have to not let the first hot impulse drive. A breath, a walk, a night's sleep, and the same situation often looks smaller. You stay the kind of person you actually want to be, instead of the one a bad moment would have made you.

Inspired by the old idea of response not reaction. Written by Ugo Charles.