Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.

Grief and outrage both feel like responses, and both can stand in for the harder work of figuring out how something came to happen. Feeling is not the enemy; getting stuck at the feeling is. Once you understand the mechanism behind a person’s behavior or a bad turn of events, you usually find something you can act on, and often something less personal than it appeared. Understanding is not the same as approving.

Next time something makes you furious, give it ten minutes of curiosity before you give it a conclusion. Ask what pressure the other person was under. See what remains of the anger afterward.