are fueled by love. Country. Compassion. Destiny. Reconciliation.
Mastery. Idealism. Family.
Even in Jordan’s case, he was most inspiring not when he was
trying to dominate someone but when he was playing for the love of
the game. And his rings all came under the tutelage and coaching of
Phil Jackson, known in basketball as the “Zen Master.”
It would be unfair to say that Michael Jordan was as tortured or
pained as Richard Nixon, or that he was utterly without joy or
happiness. Still, the speech is striking. He had locked so much anger
and pain up in a closet in his soul that, at some point, the doors burst
open and the mess poured out.
Seneca’s argument was that anger ultimately blocks us from
whatever goal we are trying to achieve. While it might temporarily
help us achieve success in our chosen field, in the long run it is
destructive. How excellent is excellence if it doesn’t make us feel
content, happy, fulfilled? It’s a strange bargain that winning, as
Jordan illustrated, should require us to constantly think of the times
we were made to feel like a loser. The reward for becoming world-
class should not be that you are a walking open wound, a trigger
that’s pulled a thousand times a day.
And what of the people whose anger is more of a hot flash than a
slow burn? Seneca once more:
There is no more stupefying thing than anger, nothing
more bent on its own strength. If successful, none more
arrogant, if foiled, none more insane—since it’s not driven
back by weariness even in defeat, when fortune removes
its adversary it turns its teeth on itself.Anger is counterproductive. The flash of rage here, an outburst at
the incompetence around us there—this may generate a moment of
raw motivation or even a feeling of relief, but we rarely tally up the
frustration they cause down the road. Even if we apologize or the
good we do outweighs the harm, damage remains—and
consequences follow. The person we yelled at is now an enemy. The
drawer we broke in a fit is now a constant annoyance. The high blood