Your mind is a good friend.

I’ve realized there’s some irony in trying to rid yourself of the notion of “self.” You have to step back from your own mind and observe it as a third-party, like you would consider a good friend. When you see a friend falter, you don’t scold them or condemn them; you sympathize, help them out, encourage them to keep trying. When a friend suffers a minor setback, you don’t wail and moan and predict their demise; you shrug and say, “It happens, you can handle it,” and move on.

We have to treat ourselves–our minds–as a close friend we care very much about, but as separate from ourselves.

And yet, it’s also true that there is no observer inside our heads. There is no self. Consciousness isn’t magical, ethereal, outside the rules that govern the universe. It arises from the same atomic matter that everything does. What we think of as “me” isn’t really there, not in the way we think it is.

It’s like being a self-driving car (if it’s possible to imagine being a self-driving car…). It’s possible that a Google car thinks it’s a driver driving a car, when of course the truth is that the car and the thing driving the car are one and the same.

And yet in order to effectively drive the car, the care has to behave as if it is a separate driver.

That metaphor is a bit thin, I’ll admit, and I’m tired of typing the words “car” and “driver” over and over, so I’ll just leave it there. The important takeaway here is: Treat your mind like it’s a good friend, or a car that you really care about. Or something.

You can’t be mad about something you don’t know.

When you’re in the car and someone cuts you off, and you find yourself getting mad, try to remember that you don’t know anything about the person in the other car.

You may think you know who they are. They’re a jerk. They’re thoughtless, careless, selfish, reckless.

But you don’t know that. The person you’re imagining in your head is a composite of all the drivers who have ruined your day in the past. It’s as if whatever car is used to perpetrate the moving injustice against you, it’s always driven by the same nebulous, nefarious roadway villain with a blurry face and not a care in the world.

Truth is, though, you probably don’t know what the person who cut you off looks like. You don’t know if they’re a man or a woman, in some cases. You certainly don’t know their name, where they came from, if their parents are still alive, if they know someone who survived cancer–or someone who didn’t survive. You don’t know their favorite album, their favorite movie, their favorite kind of food.

And if you don’t know any of those things about this person, how can you possibly know the one thing that is actually relevant to this situation:

Why did they cut you off?

Are they really selfish? Were they distracted? Are they just a bad driver?

Instead of applying any of those possible scenarios to them, which only serve to fuel your anger, be gracious and give them the benefit of the doubt. Remember that you have undoubtedly cut someone off in the past, probably more than once. Maybe you didn’t realize you did it. And maybe neither did this person.

Maybe you had a really good reason. And maybe does this person.

Maybe it was the one and only time in your life you ever did anything like that and you later regretted it.

And maybe the same goes for this person.

The truth is, getting angry at someone on the road for how they drive is just about the most futile waste of mental energy ever invented by mankind. It’s literally shouting in the void–or into the traffic, as it were.

It’s futile. It accomplishes nothing. It’s anger for the sake of itself.

So next time you find yourself fuming at another driver, stop and ask yourself what you really know.

You can’t be mad about something you don’t know.