Don't hit

There is something satisfyingly corporeal about hitting someone.

Football players know what I am talking about.

It's inherently kinaesthetic. Contact with another person's body gives you a distinct and measurable sense of the position and balance of your own. It's like sex that way. So much of the experience is in the depth of your own existence relative to another's.

I've seen it. I've done it. It's been done to me. I've wanted to do it and haven't.

I'm not talking about the desire to swat your kids, or bop them on the head, which I've also wanted to do, and have done - usually with regret.

I mean a full-on desire to punch someone in the face; to define for them where their world stops and yours begins. It's satisfying and primeval. It is a basic and animalistic assertion of authority.

But we are not animals. It is virtuous to control those animal instincts. Whether because we believe god created us differently, or that we've evolved beyond them, it is a show of civilized behavior (civilised behaviour if you're British) to rise above the violent reactions.

I wish I never felt that way. I wish there was nothing to rise above. I wish there was no anger.