“Choler” is an archaic word — one of the four body humors in medieval medicine — identified with anger. We live in choleric times.

Anger, distrust and short tempers abound. As political temperatures rise, so do our actions. Conversations become debates, debates become shouting matches and shouting matches turn into protests. While much of this is healthy intellectual jousting, necessary to our dynamic democratic processes, it can turn ugly. If we’re not careful, we soon find ourselves at each other’s throats. As Jan. 6 demonstrated, angry protesters can quickly escalate into a violent mob.

This is a far cry from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s seminal novel “Love in the Time of Cholera,” which, though set in comparably hard times (and as its title suggests), is about love. By contrast, our choleric time is largely about hate. Hate of “the other” — the other party, the other religion, the other nation, the other color, the other sex. The list goes on.

In Marquez’s story, told in the language of magic realism, clouds of yellow butterflies symbolizing love and hope surround the book’s characters, dazzling and delighting them. In our modern dyspeptic tale of chaos and uncertainty, told in the language of magical thinking, the symbolic insects would more likely be swarms of buzzing hornets, attacking and stinging everyone.

So much for literary metaphors. Let’s get down to real life.

When my wife and I travel south every winter, all the way down to the southernmost tip of Florida, we visit my wife’s lifelong friend and her husband. Let’s call them Bob and Ruby. They’re wonderful people. Intelligent, thoughtful, kind, generous and great fun to be with. They’re also diehard Trump fans. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem except that my wife and I are as liberal as they are conservative, and our visits with them aren’t brief encounters but extended stays, typically a week or more. Add to that the fact that we stay with them in their house. Plenty of time and opportunity for the political pot to heat up, bubble to the surface and, if we’re not careful, boil over. Argument, finger pointing and raised voices surely to follow.

Before Trump’s election we could talk politics, our conversations animated but not angry. But after, everything changed. So now we typically take precautions to avoid direct confrontation. These take the form of watching what we say and, if a politically loaded comment is uttered, intentionally or otherwise, not taking the bait. For the most part, both parties abide by these unspoken rules of the house. This mutual truce is not so easily maintained under a single roof. They read the Wall Street Journal, we read the New York Times; they watch Fox News, we watch MSNBC. Bob introduced me to the word “kakistocracy” (“government by the least suitable or competent citizens”). I bought him a copy of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Trump loyalist, financier and hatchet man Elon Musk, the world’s richest man (and the world’s worst human resource manager).

As luck would have it, our truce was put to the test when, right in the middle of our stay, the Oval Office blowup between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky occurred. The news of the eruption was all over the media, blasting from every news source, 24-7. It was the perfect opportunity for us to ford the moats, breach the gates, batter the ramparts and storm each other’s carefully constructed, well-defended castles in the sky.

But I’m happy to report that our truce was held. Instead of battling over politics, we went out for a delicious Cuban dinner (our gift to repay them for their generous hospitality) and talked about family life, new grandchildren and sous vide, our new cooking discovery. As critical as political events may sometimes be (and I’m not denying their importance, especially during these dire days), there are times when other things in life are simply more important. Like breaking bread with good friends. And keeping those friendships alive and well. While we hate Bob and Ruby’s politics, we love them.

Our human ancestors almost became extinct about a million years ago, when our population was reduced to about 1,200 breeding individuals. That means every single person on this planet, all 8 billion of us, are distant descendants of the same tiny tribe. Like it or not, we are all intimately related. In other words, we are one big family.

This may be a time of choler, but it’s no time to turn our backs on each other.