When We Need Someone to Blame — The Essays of Montaigne

In the worst of his fits a gout sufferer must have something to quarrel with, and he curses Bologna sausages and hams as if salt meat had caused the stone. Montaigne says the soul always needs an object. If it cannot reach the real wound, it turns the violence on itself, or on whatever sits nearest and can still be hit.

Wind loses force in empty space unless it meets a tree. Wounded beasts rush the spear that stuck them. Augustus, tossed at sea, defies Neptune and strips his statue from the procession. Xerxes has the Hellespont whipped. A king will punish a palace, a river, or a god when the fever will not take a name. Lucan already knew the pattern: passion looks for resistance, and without resistance it spends itself on air.

The target is not the cause. The need to strike is the cause. Until you name the thing you cannot touch, you will keep fighting sausages, traffic, and whoever happens to be in the doorway. The quarrel looks busy. It does not touch the stone. Name the stone first, then decide whether the doorway deserves any of the heat. The sausages did not cause the fit. They were only close enough to shout at.