January 11
‘Everything is opinion’ — what the saying of Monimus means is plain. But plain too is its usefulness: if one takes its kernel, insofar as it is true.
Meditations II.15
Listening mode
‘Everything is opinion’ — what the saying of Monimus means is plain. But plain too is its usefulness: if one takes its kernel, insofar as it is true.
A remark someone lets drop in passing can occupy you for a whole evening. You repeat it, give it a tone it may never have had, and add intentions. At some point you notice that most of what torments you about it comes from you. The sentence itself was short.
That can be a relief. What you added you can also leave out again, not on command, but little by little.
It gets harder when someone else tells you about a remark like that. The same insight suddenly sounds different when you turn it on them: as though you meant they were only imagining their hurt. What a moment ago gave you room takes room away from them. They had no evening's distance, and they didn't ask for your interpretation.
So the thought seems to work in one direction only: for what you yourself hear. And even there it has a limit. Some sentences were meant exactly the way they reached you. Then you added nothing. You simply listened properly.
