January 30
The lonelier I am, the poorer in friends, the more I will respect the law that stands within me. When everything wavers, I hold to what I have recognised as right.
Jane Eyre (freely rendered)
Listening mode
The lonelier I am, the poorer in friends, the more I will respect the law that stands within me. When everything wavers, I hold to what I have recognised as right.
A conviction that no one shares with you is hard to tell apart from a mistake. As long as others agree, it gets tested along the way. Once that agreement falls away, you lack not only support but also someone who could correct you.
In such situations another measure is quick to push forward: whatever feels right at the moment. It is closer and louder. Yet it shifts with exhaustion, with fear and with the wish to belong somewhere again.
What you once recognised as right, by contrast, comes from an hour when nothing was pressing on you. Holding on to it means trusting someone who isn't present now and whom you can no longer ask: yourself, a few months younger. That person could be wrong too. But no one was pushing them.
Perhaps at some point you notice that you can no longer fully piece together a reason from back then. You hold to it anyway, the way you would believe a friend whose reasoning you can't hear just now.
