Iggeres HaRamban
As we said in EmunahSpeak:
Gently Speaking, The actual
mussar of the Iggeres HaRamban opens with the Ramban’s admonishment to
his son that he should accustom himself (yourself) to speak gently to all
people at all times.
The Ramban then
reveals that this admonition is something more than a nice middah to
incorporate into one’s character toolbox.
With the words,
gentle speech will protect you from anger, the Ramban moves us from the
realm of stam menchlikeit to one of self preservation.
And how exactly will
gentle speech save you from anger?
There is no
mysterious process at work here. In
fact, it is quite the opposite because it’s about as close to common sense as
one can get in that there is a direct causal connection between how one speaks
and how one reacts to outside stimuli, a.k.a. aggravation.
Rabbi Moshe
Hauer takes it a step further and tells us that a calm response can even turn
away anger that already exists. By
speaking softly the anger gets no outlet with which to express itself.
And even on
those occasions when it does have an outlet to express itself, Rabbi Yisroel
Brog informs us that if you take the Ramban’s advice to accustom yourself to
speaking gently, the anger will be toned down.
And the reason that it will be toned down (which is also the reason that
gentle speech will protect you from anger in the first place) is because
speaking b’nachas (softly) is a mechanism that will help you control your
anger. And it also carries with it some
not so incidental benefits vis à vis self control because one’s self control
over himself is directly related to how he controls his anger.
And that bit of
sports wisdom that declares a good offense to be the best defense is no less
applicable to protecting oneself from anger because as Rabbi Brog tells us, any
time you see that you’re going to get upset you should defuse the incipient anger
by speaking b’nachas with everyone.
For someone who
is seeking to protect himself against the plague of anger, neither a rich uncle
nor a contact in City Hall will avail.
For such a person, the proteksia of gentle speech is the only game in
town for as Rabbi Brog lets us hear, gentle speech is not a way to protect oneself from anger.
It’s the only
way.
