There is a moment between what happens to us and what we do next. Sometimes it lasts only a few seconds. Someone says something that angers us. A plan falls apart. We receive bad news. We feel dismissed, frightened, insulted or disappointed. The first reaction arrives almost instantly. The Stoics understood that. Seneca wrote extensively about anger, and one of his most useful observations was that the first emotional response is not entirely within our control. We feel the j