How you experience reality is a function of your choices and actions, primarily. There is a field of matter that is out there, physically, there are shapes and colors and odors, but the meaning of that world is something that you apply onto that field (or "impute" on it).
If you really get to internalize this - which is not at all easy - then you realize that getting angry is a function of yourself, and your partner's shoes in the hallway are just a supporting context for that anger to manifest. But anger doesn't stem from that situation, it stems from you.
If you didn't experience something before, you can't recognize it, you don't know how it is. So if you're angry, it's because you've been angry in the past and developed some sort of a tendency towards anger, that gets more and more powerful as you give in to it.
I wrote a longer piece on this topic and how we get to understand and to create the world around us - http://dragosroua.com/the-language-of-happiness/ (I don't want to steal your thunder by posting the link, but the piece is simply too long to be pasted as a comment, and I just felt it's relevant to your article).
For me, the most functional way to deal with reality (and what I wrote so far in this comment is basically a translation of it in modern terms) is Buddhism, not as a religion, but more as a philosophy, or life management framework.
I will have to second other commenters opinion about this being probably one of the most profound posts of yours here.
I didn't know much about you and it was this very article that led me to your Wikipedia profile. In a way, I think that the airport incident - and the following year - was a "speeding ticket", something that, eventually, forced you to become a better person.
Agreed, it really did change who I was.