Explanation

Just a short while ago I was musing over why I lost my temper at a traffic insult. And that got me thinking: why do I have a short fuse in general? Why can't I control my anger? Why do I let things get to me?

I suspect there's no easy answer for me. If I haven't figured it out in 53 years, it's not a simple thing. I consider myself pretty intelligent; a simple answer would have presented itself long ago.

And then something struck me that may have crossed my mind before, but not in recent memory. It's not just anger that is easy to come. It's every emotion, as if every emotion I'm able to feel is always just beneath the surface. I can become enraged easily. I can just as easily, if not more easily, be overcome by sadness or happiness or feelings of empathy or disgust or loathing. Maybe all these seething emotions are just looking for vents and, if they haven't been sufficiently vented in awhile, they boil to the surface.

That's a convenient explanation, but I don't think it's that easy. But it's one to put on my list of things to think about.