February 15
Everything that happens is as ordinary and familiar as the rose in spring and the fruit in summer: so too illness, death, slander and plotting — and everything that delights or grieves fools.
Meditations IV.44
Listening mode
Everything that happens is as ordinary and familiar as the rose in spring and the fruit in summer: so too illness, death, slander and plotting — and everything that delights or grieves fools.
“It's common,” the doctor says, and you're not quite sure whether the words reassure you or sting. They mean there is experience, tried and tested approaches, figures. At the same time, something vanishes into them that had seemed so much your own: the night you lay awake, the fear with its very particular colouring.
That something is ordinary doesn't take away its weight. A loss doesn't grow lighter because millions know it. It only stops being a riddle aimed at you alone. The question of why you, of all people, no longer finds anyone to address itself to.
That can be a relief. But it can also make you lonelier. The world had a category for your alarm before you knew of it, and it files it away without pausing.
Out in the waiting room others are sitting, each presumably with something common. You can't tell by looking at any of them.
