…the house I live in…

“It seemed to me as if I had myself written the book, in some former life, so sincerely it spoke to my thought and experience.” – Emerson on Montaigne’s Essays

Anger “moves us; our hand does not guide it, it guides our hand; it holds us, we do not hold it.”

I am slow to anger, thankfully. As a younger, ambitious man I occasionally gave myself over to it, particularly in my days as an entrepreneur. I never fortunately had occasion to go white hot with anger. For that I am grateful. But on rare occasions I allowed my anger to take me “over the precipice…all the way to the bottom: the fall ‘providing’ its own rushing and excitement and acceleration.” As Montaigne says, heightened anger is “a passion that takes pleasure in itself and flatters itself.”

I’ve read that, generally speaking, a person, as they age, will grow either more mellow or more angry. Age has put me on the path to considerable mellowness; yet, like all generalities, it’s not foolproof. Consequently, when I find myself growing irritated, such that I see anger on the horizon, I think of Montaigne’s advice:

“While our pulse beats and we feel emotion, let us put off the business. Things will truly seem different to us when we have quieted and cooled down.”

This technique, he relates, has a surprising and beneficial side effect, often turning the tide of an argument. “On big occasions I have this satisfaction…that everyone expects to see a reasonable anger engendered; I glory in deceiving their expectation.” He glories in doing the unexpected–Montaigne the contrarian. But he is also human, and just like the rest of us, he occasionally loses his equanimity. He writes:

“When I get angry, it is as keenly, but also as briefly and privately, as I can. I do indeed lose my temper in haste and violence, but I do not lose my bearings to the point of hurling about all sorts of insulting words at random and without choice….”

One of the enduring–and endearing–qualities of Montaigne is that he presents his own humanness without self-consciousness. He does not talk in terms of theory or precepts–indeed, he disdains such talk. He talks of himself immeshed in the whole of human experience. (We will later for example, investigate his thoughts on impotence, bowl movements, stomach aches and hangovers, among other things). He is often referred to as the “first modern” due to his unexpergated self-investigation.

Social media and the general discord of society being what they are, anger seems more welcome and natural than ever. Fueled by anger, people tend to reject compromise, instead digging in and rolling up their sleeves to prepare for a fight. No one wins in these battle royals. Anger feeds on itself and is forever a hungry beast. Montaigne offers us a practice to counter this unwarranted and negative energy:

“This is how I bargain with those who may argue with me: When you sense that I am the first one excited, let me go my way, right or wrong; I will do the same for you in my turn. The tempest is bred only of the competition of angers, which are prone to produce one another, and are not born at the same moment. Let us give each one its head, and we shall always be at peace. A useful prescription, but hard to carry out.”

A useful prescription, but hard to carry out–Montaigne the realist.

Thanks for reading, stay calm, and remember,
There is no passion that so shakes the clarity of our judgment as anger.