Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
—Ambrose Bierce
When you lose your temper, whom does it inevitably seem to be with? Your family. It’s strange. We’ll stomach some pretty rude behavior from strangers on the street, but God forbid your son leaves his shoes out! You were professional while asking your assistant (for the thousandth time) to do something, but you’ll get short with your spouse because they couldn’t hear you over the noise in the other room.
It feels like a paradox, but really this is a problem of proximity. Precisely because they’re closest to you, you have more opportunities to get upset with them than with anyone else. It’s a sad, twisted state of affairs. The people who are all bad but far away are rarely targets for our rage. But the people who are mostly good—who on the whole have helped and loved us many times more than they’ve hurt us—they’re the ones who get the brunt of it?
“Let’s not be angry at good people,” Seneca writes in “On Anger.” Today, when you find yourself getting upset at someone you love, remind yourself that their positive traits far outweigh whatever is bothering you in the moment. Remind yourself that yelling doesn’t make them hear you better. Remind yourself that they probably know they messed up and probably feel bad enough already. Remind yourself how small they are. Remind yourself how good they are.
The fact that we can get mad at someone, because they love us enough to put up with it or because they’re kids and they just have to live with it (and us), is not an excuse. We should try not to get upset with anyone, but if we are going to get mad, let’s make sure the object of our frustration is a target of offense, not of opportunity.