When you surf, sometimes you have to paddle out against the tides and sometimes you get the joy of riding the wave. Good surfers develop skill both in going against and with the current.

Likewise in Proverbs. Sometimes your passions and parts won’t lead you anywhere you want to go.

A fool’s lips walk into a fight,
and his mouth invites a beating (Proverbs 18.6)

So you must restrain them and yourself.

When words are many, transgression is not lacking,
but whoever restrains his lips is prudent (Proverbs 10.19).

Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty,
and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city (Proverbs 16.32).

Whoever restrains his words has knowledge,
and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding (Proverbs 17.27).

A fool gives full vent to his spirit,
but a wise man quietly holds it back (Proverbs 29.11).

“Restrains,” “rules,” “quietly holds it back” One might think that emotion and impulse and appetite are your sworn enemy.

But you would be wrong. They are the horses that move you. You just need to point them in the right direction before allowing them to go.

A worker’s appetite works for him;
his mouth urges him on (Proverbs 16.26).

Thus, Solomon’s marital counseling:

Drink water from your own cistern,
flowing water from your own well.
Should your springs be scattered abroad,
streams of water in the streets?
Let them be for yourself alone,
and not for strangers with you.
Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
be intoxicated always in her love.
Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman
and embrace the bosom of an adulteress?
For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the Lord,
and he ponders all his paths (Proverbs 5.15-21).