I�m having trouble with my temper. It�s a new and unforeseen wrinkle. Twice in the past week I�ve stuck up my middle finger at cars. Sure, they were cutting me off in the crosswalk while I had the light, but that happens every day and I never before felt the need to resort to tacky gestures. I felt shocked and dirty each time afterwards. It gets worse, too. I called a homeless man an asshole the other day. Actually it was two weeks ago but I�ve been stressing about it ever since.

I had just finished my long run for that week (16 miles) and gotten my special post-long-run mint mocha. The hours after my long run are probably my most content and self-satisfied time of the week. As I limped towards home a homeless man in a blanket came up to me. He asked me to go into the drugstore and buy him some potato chips. I said no. He said, �Hey, I�m not asking you to give me money!� I said no again and walked past him. He muttered, �Oh, I guess you�re just really SELFISH.� Then I turned around and kind of said, kind of yelled, �Hey, you don�t have to be an asshole about it!� For a second he recognized the truth of my statement and said, �I�m not trying to be an asshole.� Then he remembered he was supposed to be inviolate and he started screaming at me and flapping around in his blanket.

I felt an immediate need to feel horrible but I tamped it down. I told myself that by reacting to his insult I had treated him with more humanity than most people did. I mean, if a regular person insulted you on the street, you�d react. By letting a homeless person get away with it, you�re putting him on the level of a dog or child that can�t be expected to be responsible for its own actions. Well, that cute little line of reasoning fell apart as soon as I was home in my warm apartment, sitting on my soft couch and eating good food. Then I felt so guilty.

What bothers me the most about these incidents is that they all happened �before I knew it.� That is, my decision to react with hostility and obscenity happened so quickly that I wasn�t able to consider my options. In my last entry I talked about choice, and I think the key to choice is training yourself to identify the moment at which choice happens, so that you�re able to really consider it.

With drinking, the choice is a little more drawn out. For example, I would have to leave the house to get alcohol. That provides dozens of smaller moments at which I could change my mind. Am I really going to put on my shoes to go get alcohol? Do I really want to put on my coat to go get alcohol? Have I really thought about what the consequences will be if I walk out the door to go buy alcohol? I recognize all these moments as choices because I�ve trained myself to do so and to use them as obstacles.

That�s why it worries me that I�m totally not recognizing the temper choice. Maybe it�s like I theorized before, that when I focus all my discipline energy at one target, other areas requiring discipline start to suffer. Food is a good example. I ate a huge brunch yesterday and topped it off with a bag of Cheetos. Cheetos are not normally part of my diet, but it felt pretty right.

So if you see me on the street, spraying invective and Cheeto crumbs at the less fortunate, please keep in mind that I am not drinking.

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