Today, I rode past a church which had on its sign “The one who makes you angry controls you.” Motorcycle riding offers a unique sort of period for contemplation, and this was excellent fodder for my ride.

I think that what the church meant was that we should not surrender our freedom to others, but I took a different, Stoic message from it.

The one who makes us angry controls us, by which we could mean our ruling faculty, our reason controls us and has the ability to make a judgement of being harmed which can result in anger.

Instead of worrying over whether our neighbor controls our actions, we should firmly look to controllong ourselves, since it is by means of a judgement that we are made angry… or not.