I think I've started to handle the anger better. Listening to the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast on the Stoics: an emotion requires that I assent to it. For the Stoics, this is because emotions are grounded in reason. For me, it is because I can (and must) respond to my emotions. (Getting pulled into reaction is to be pulled into (the creation of) a rut.)

In Kung Fu speak, it is as though I am dying to be reborn—to resist this process will only make it difficult for me. I must accept this, my death—yet another one on this journey. My birth—yet another one on this journey. For one must constantly die to oneself to be reborn as (now) one worthy of raising another human.

(An attempted solace: babies are stimulus-impulse neuronal network beings: i.e., they have no choice/choosing faculty. But this feels like I'm abrogating/abnegating my responsibility towards this fragility by thinking it 'less than human.' Sure, she is developing and is not fully choosing, but the emphasis could rather be on her way of being — how she is — and our/my responsivity to her.)

(I get angry towards technology and the baby: the 'inert' permissibility of emotional release?)

- December 16.