Why do bad thoughts last so long?

It’s odd isn’t it, but bad thoughts stay in my head and if I’m not careful they grow.

This week I was driving my wife’s car. It’s not the fastest and it has the overtaking power of a snail, but it gets us around. I signalled to pull into a layby, slowed down and pulled in. As I did, a Mercedes blasted his horn at us.

Now, I’m never going to see this person again, but I wanted to kill them. Why did they do that? They have to be punished. As we drove on, I wanted to catch them up. If I did I was going to leap out and rip them from their comfy cocoon and beat them to a pulp. I was going to…

All that insanity dropped from nowhere and left me with a rage to control. Not only that, I then started to dig through other times I’d been annoyed for no good reason and started to relive those as well.

Crazy thinking that I need to control is always waiting to get me. The search for a perfect serenity isn’t over yet. At the next traffic lights I thought they were two cars in front and debated. I held back. As we turned I realised it was a different car. Thankfully, think twice worked.