He turned
a little too short, caught the other fellow's
front fender, and crumpled his own nice
new rear fender most annoyingly--and expensively.
And then he noticed that the other car
was a ragged old flivver that could not
be damaged much by anything that could
be done to it. And he discovered that
he had just put a bad mark on his own
car as a "reward" for yielding to temper,
for pampering his tendency to temper!
Also he knew that he had narrowly escaped
worse, for that sort of thing is playing
with disaster, as we can always see plainly
enough afterwards.
When a man gets mad he befogs his judgment. Virtually always he does something foolish, sometimes he does things that seem insane, sometimes he does irretrievable things, tragic, fatal things! What he does always ranges somewhere between silliness and crime. The young man or girl who "talks back" to an employer, the teacher or parent or man or woman who gives rein to white hot passion and says scathing, lacerating, cruel things or deals blows with a fist or a weapon, simply surrenders to an emotion and lets it run his life--usually to the point of shame, sometimes to the point of disgrace, and sometimes--once too often --to murder! That's the way murders are done--letting passion rule instead of intelligence!
But the worst of it all does not lie in the deed you do when you get mad. It lies in yielding the management of your life to emotion or passion
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