Seneca Moral essays
Seneca: You see how free from any mental disturbance a…
You see how free from any mental disturbance a man ought to be who has to weigh and consider all this, when he deals with a matter which ought to be handled with the utmost care, I mean, the power of life and death. The sword of justice is ill-placed in the hands of an angry man.
The passage follows a public-domain translation of Seneca’s moral essays. The reading beside it is ours.
The more power a decision carries, the less room there is for anger. Anger narrows the frame. It makes punishment feel satisfying, certainty feel obvious, and the person in front of us seem smaller than they are. That is dangerous in a courtroom, but the same principle applies whenever you manage people, parent, teach, hire, or decide whether to end a relationship. Do not send the performance review while furious. Do not decide a teenager's consequence in the middle of a shouting match. Do not make a public judgment from a single clip online. Calm is not softness; it is the condition that lets you see proportion. Take a walk, sleep on it, write the facts down, or ask someone uninvolved to review your thinking. Today, treat your anger as a reason to delay a consequential decision, not as evidence that you are ready to make one.
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