A Saturday I had been looking forward to all week.
Just as I start driving toward a beautiful beach 40 minutes away, it begins to rain.
Feeling annoyed, I stop by a Taiwanese dumpling place earlier than planned.
The first dish that comes out tastes worse than I expected.
Anger stirs.

When I'm stuck on hold with a customer service center,
when my tennis serve keeps hitting the net today,
when something I worked hard on turns out to be useless,
or when the person I love does something I just can’t understand—
small and large waves rise in the sea inside me.
And then, anger slowly seep in like poison.

Like venom spreading from a snake bite,
slowly, silently, and secretly.

When I think about it, most anger begins from something outside of us.
That trigger starts a reaction in our body.
'It' increases the chance of heart attack, weakens our immune system,
causes digestive issues, lowers brain function, and even drops sleep quality.
This terrifying chain reaction is not just emotion—
it's something that affects the whole body.

Then what turns an outside trigger into anger inside our body?

In Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, a book my business partner and I both like,
the part I underlined the most leads to one message:
We feel anger, pain, and fear not because of what happens,
but because of how we interpret them.
The real cause of pain is not outside—it's inside us.

When the investment I chose moves in the wrong direction,
when I’m losing a tennis match,
when someone treats me badly—
Will I pour fuel on the fire of anger?
Will I let it poison me and take control of me?
Will I let it cause harm—bad hormones, bad mood, bad decisions?

That choice is up to me.

So how can I stop my mind from turning an external trigger
into instant anger at the speed of light?

• Chess genius Josh Waitzkin says in The Art of Learning
  that when a trigger comes, we should sit with the feeling, observe it,
  turn it into fuel for our passion, and then create our own “earthquake” and let it go.

• Shota, the first Korean sushi chef in Japan to win a Michelin star,
  emphasizes the importance of routines to keep inner calm.

• Former Buddhist monk, Ryunosuke Koike says
  we shouldn’t become crashing waves,
  but instead become the sea that calms them.

Creating happiness matters,
but as Schopenhauer said, reducing suffering might be closer to true happiness.
To manage anger is not for others, but
it's a choice to reduce suffering I give myself.

As Warren Buffett (announced his retirement plan yesterday) said:

“Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with the 130 IQ. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble.”

A good investor balances greed and fear.
I think anger lives in that same space—
between greed (“How dare they treat me like this?”)
and fear (“Are they ignoring me?”).

Like the sea that quiets the waves,
the sky that doesn’t chase the clouds,
the mountain that holds steady the shaking trees—
if I can become like that,
I’m sure I will become a better investor.