The experience of anger can be quite involuntary. Something happens, trespassing against our expectations of how things should be, leaving us furious.
Okay. But then what happens.
Anger can quickly turn into self-righteousness, to barricading oneself on the moral high ground. And anger can take the legs out from under our ability to listen perceptively and to relate imaginatively to people who think differently from us. And because of this, anger can handicap any attempt to accurately perceive and productively improve the situation that made us angry in the first place.
We do not always have the choice to be furious. But we can, afterwards and always, choose to be curious.
(Hey! The above reminds me of the dear Fr. Michael Rossmann, SJ’s recent post on his new Substack blog. Check it out!)
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