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Areas › Anger › Righteous anger and perfectionism
Anger tidies things up. The doubt goes, the mixed feelings go, and for a moment you know where you stand. Take that away without putting anything in its place and most people go looking for it again by the evening. So it helps to find other places to feel steady and capable: work you can finish, a decision that is actually yours to make, one person you can be straight with.
Do not assert your own goodness: He knows best who is mindful of Him (Quran 53:32). The very sense of standing on higher ground is what is being questioned.
النجم
ٱلَّذِينَ يَجۡتَنِبُونَ كَبَٰٓئِرَ ٱلۡإِثۡمِ وَٱلۡفَوَٰحِشَ إِلَّا ٱللَّمَمَۚ إِنَّ رَبَّكَ وَٰسِعُ ٱلۡمَغۡفِرَةِۚ هُوَ أَعۡلَمُ بِكُمۡ إِذۡ أَنشَأَكُم مِّنَ ٱلۡأَرۡضِ وَإِذۡ أَنتُمۡ أَجِنَّةࣱ فِي بُطُونِ أُمَّهَٰتِكُمۡۖ فَلَا تُزَكُّوٓاْ أَنفُسَكُمۡۖ هُوَ أَعۡلَمُ بِمَنِ ٱتَّقَىٰٓ
As for those who avoid grave sins and foul acts, though they may commit small sins, your Lord is ample in forgiveness. He has been aware of you from the time He produced you from the earth and from your hiding places in your mothers’ wombs, so do not assert your own goodness:He knows best who is mindful of Him
Qur’an 53:32read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a controlled study, people kept awake for 53 hours shifted in how they judged what the right course of action was. Moral certainty moves with the state of the body, which is a reason not to treat the strength of a conviction as evidence for it. This was a small, extreme sleep deprivation experiment, a long way from an ordinary bad night.
Killgore WD, Killgore DB, Day LM, Li C, Kamimori GH, Balkin TJ. (2007). The effects of 53 hours of sleep deprivation on moral judgment.. Sleep doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The clarity anger hands you is a reward, and rewarded behaviour repeats itself.
When someone is in full flood, leaving is allowed. Getting out of the way of a person who is past listening is a skill, not a defeat.
However you speak to yourself about your own mistakes is usually how you will end up thinking about other people's. Going easier on yourself is not a treat you have not earned, it is part of getting easier on everyone else.
That flash of temper when someone meets a fact that undoes their story is not stupidity. It is a mind defending its own shape, which is a real need rather than a shameful one.