... in times of conflict and stress, try to bite your tongue, pause before replying, observe your emotional state, and de-escalate — you will feel better, the battle will be briefer, and maybe it will turn out not to be a battle at all, just a brief ripple on the surface of the ocean that soon returns to calm awareness ...

_{(highlighted by a friend when reading Emotional States (2012-04-26); perhaps the phrase alludes to Shantideva Chapter 5 in the Bodhisattvacaryavatara; cf. Space Between (2013-10-15), Betwixt (2015-07-04), Moving from Experiences to Experiencing (2015-08-06), Learning to Pause (2015-08-10), Mantra - Gap (2015-11-11), ...) - ^z - 2016-01-26}