Moderation.

“You’re not a mean person,” my wife recently told me. “But you can be mean.”

She’s right, of course. I don’t suffer fools very well, and my first instinct can be quite harsh. Sometimes, it’s my second instinct, too. When I am fully present, however, I observe that instinct and choose to feel something else. I often think about what the late David Foster Wallace said: “The only thing you can truly control is how you think about things.” When…