There was this guy in a restaurant yelling at his kid for no particular reason. The kid hadn't done anything wrong, I think the guy had a bad day and was taking it out on her and/or was just an asshole. I was getting really pissed. I was just fuming, about to blow up at him. Then i had this frozen moment of clarity. I realized that my anger was just hurting me, it wasn't helping her, it wasn't stopping him. What's done is done, there's no changing that. But what led up to the current moment limits what is possible within the immediate future too. This guy had probably been an asshole for years, or maybe was just in a horrible mood, regardless I wasn't going to be able to change him in a couple seconds of confronting him, certainly not with the conflict resolution skills I had at the time as I too had a history and the limitations that come from one. I could even make matters worse for her in trying to do so. So there I was looking at myself fuming while asking what good it did, noticing how it made me less able to act, more likely to blow up uselessly at the guy, and frankly, maybe get myself beat up in the process. He looked like the kind of guy who might resolve his problems like that. So I let my anger go, I tried to accept the moment for what it was. That didn't mean I approved of it, or even condoned it, just accepted what was and tried to work from there. I thought back to my parents taking with each other a few weeks earlier about how anger relies on violated expectations, so I tried to bring my expectations into alignment with the possible. The moment unfroze as I thought over the responses I could take, and I soon found my moment to act. I had just paid my bill as the asshole went off to the bathroom, so on my way out I stopped over by the little girl. I told her that I had seen what had happened and that it wasn't her fault. I told her she had done nothing wrong and that it didn't always have to be like that. Not everyone is an asshole and as you get older you can choose who to associate with. I had noticed her looking at a little notebook I had been doodling in and my mechanical pencil, I gave her those and a hastily done comic I made at her father's expense, and then I left.