January 3
Some were helped by looking into a mirror when anger seized them: the transformation frightened them — they did not recognise themselves.
On Anger II.36
Listening mode
Some were helped by looking into a mirror when anger seized them: the transformation frightened them — they did not recognise themselves.
After an argument, one sentence comes readily: "That wasn't me." It sounds like insight, and there is something true in it. The sharpness in your voice and the urge to really hurt the other person seem foreign to you afterwards. You would not count them among your traits.
Except that the other person did not encounter a stranger. For him there is no second person who spoke in your place. And while it was happening, none of it felt foreign to you. In anger you rarely feel divided; if anything, unusually at one with yourself. The reasons stand out clearly, the sentences come without hesitation, and every doubt looks like an excuse.
That is where the real difficulty lies. The feeling of being wholly yourself evidently does not prove that you are. But the strangeness afterwards does not acquit you either. Both belong to you, the certainty of then and the bewilderment of now.
When you later apologise, the sentence is on the tip of your tongue again. You leave it out and look for another that also holds for that evening.
