January 1
Alexander stood before him: Ask for whatever you want. — Stand a little out of my sun. — The most powerful man offered everything; the man in the barrel desired nothing but the light that was his anyway.
Anecdotes (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Alexander stood before him: Ask for whatever you want. — Stand a little out of my sun. — The most powerful man offered everything; the man in the barrel desired nothing but the light that was his anyway.
An invitation can be all the harder to decline the more important it makes you feel. Perhaps the evening hardly interests you. But someone thought of you, and it would be a pity to step back out of the circle of those who were thought of.
Then you look at what you had actually planned for that evening: nothing worth showing. A meal, a walk, an early night. Set against an important invitation, it seems meagre at first.
The odd calculation arises because you are comparing two different things: what you enjoy in an evening and what the invitation might say about your standing. Of course you may go. Only the unspectacular evening should also enter the comparison in full, with its quiet, its hunger and the prospect of not having to seem interesting to anyone.
