Prompt: Write about a quality you hope to cultivate.
Okay, the prompt for today, July 1, 2026, is: write about a quality you hope to cultivate.
I think this will have to be some mix of patience, compassion, understanding, empathy, and anger management.
I’ll start with the last one because I think that’s probably the quality I need to focus on first.
I’m quick to anger. It was only relatively recently that I learned that, in high school, I went to see a psychologist, and I didn’t know at the time what it was for. I knew I was going through a rough patch, but I found out later in my adult life that it was for anger management. Looking back, that makes a lot of sense.
I’m quick to fire off, and once I reach a certain point, I can’t seem to bring myself back from it. I think a lot of it has to do with a feeling of injustice. If I feel wronged, if I feel cheated, if I feel that people have acted in a way that puts me in a lesser position for their own gain—I guess that’s cheating—then I get angry. I get pretty angry.
It happens more often than I’d like to admit, especially on the road, not only as a driver but as a pedestrian or a cyclist. I find myself getting very, very angry. I have a lot of road rage, and that’s something I really need to work on.
But it happens in other interactions too. When I think people are trying to pull one over on me, I get angry very quickly, and it can lead to embarrassing situations. I have embarrassed myself, and I’ve certainly embarrassed Hannah, and that’s not a good thing.
More than that, though, it never gets me anywhere.
I’m the one who loses out because I’m the one who remains angry. The other person—I have no idea what they’re doing—but they’re certainly not part of my life anymore, and I’m the one who carries it with me. I don’t like that.
I also find it hard to empathize with the position that the other person might be in. I don’t understand why they see the world the way they do or why they made the decisions they made, and that really gets me fired up.
I do wish I had more patience for other people because I don’t know what situation they’re in. I don’t know where they’re coming from. I don’t know what they know or how they arrived at the decisions they made.
So I think I need to develop that empathy and that understanding of others.
That’s a hard one for me to swallow, though, especially when I know—or at least feel—that people have done wrong intentionally and are laughing about it. Anyway, that’s how I’m perceiving it once I’m already caught in that cycle.
So I guess that’s it. I want to develop patience, compassion, and understanding toward other people.
More than that, though, I think it’s also about building confidence in myself and my ability to move through the world despite other people and the decisions they’re make. If I’ve been wronged, I have to decide how I’m going to respond, and maybe even ask myself why I feel such a strong need to respond in the first place.
Actually… yeah.
I don’t know.
This one’s a good one. This should be an interesting month. I’m looking forward to the prompts if this is where we’re starting.
Right on.
You can find this prompt, and more, at Letters Lounge. Of course, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this or any of the other prompts, so please do leave a comment or a link to your blog, audio journal, or whatever it happens to be, and I’ll be sure to check it out.
All right, folks. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.
This transcript was lightly cleaned up with the help of AI to improve readability while preserving the original voice and intent of the recording.
Leave a Reply