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Areas › Anger › Equanimity and perspective
You do not need a generous story about the person in order to hold back. Maybe is enough: maybe they are frightened, maybe something happened this morning, maybe none of it is about you. That is not a claim about them, it is an admission that you cannot see inside their day, and it usually takes the edge off what you were about to say.
We shall certainly test you with fear and hunger, and loss of property, lives, and crops (Quran 2:155). Difficulty is promised to everybody, which makes it fair to assume the person in front of you has a share of it.
البقرة
وَلَنَبۡلُوَنَّكُم بِشَيۡءࣲ مِّنَ ٱلۡخَوۡفِ وَٱلۡجُوعِ وَنَقۡصࣲ مِّنَ ٱلۡأَمۡوَٰلِ وَٱلۡأَنفُسِ وَٱلثَّمَرَٰتِۗ وَبَشِّرِ ٱلصَّٰبِرِينَ
We shall certainly test you with fear and hunger, and loss of property, lives, and crops. But [Prophet], give good news to those who are steadfast
Qur’an 2:155read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a cross-sectional study using structural equation modelling, people higher in trait mindfulness reported less anger, hostility and aggression, and lower rumination partly explained the link. The suggestion is that a lot of the difference lies in how long you dwell on the provocation. Everything was measured at one point in time, so the direction of the effect is not established.
Borders A, Earleywine M, Jajodia A. (2010). Could mindfulness decrease anger, hostility, and aggression by decreasing rumination?. Aggressive behavior doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Restraint that comes from not being sure holds up better than restraint you have to talk yourself into.
Their account makes sense from where they are standing. So does yours. Granting the first does not cost you the second.
Fighting your own anger tends to make it louder. The part of you that flares does better treated as something to work with than something to defeat.
You get one life, and spending the whole of it at war with how it turned out is a heavy price to pay for being right.