February 25

Sometimes you trim a wish before anyone can hear it. You don't apply for the job that tempts you, but for the one you are sure to get. You suggest meeting, but only for an hour, so that a refusal weighs less. What you then achieve matches exactly what you wanted. You are hardly ever disappointed.

From outside, this looks like composure. From inside, it often feels different: more like a sum you worked out before the world could answer. You did not find the limit of the possible; you drew it yourself, as a precaution, a little on this side of it.

But what is possible often shows itself only when you ask for a little more. The refusal comes, or it doesn't. Only afterwards do you know where the limit actually runs, and sometimes it lies further out than you gave it credit for.

So there are two ways of making peace with the unattainable. One begins after the answer, the other before it. When you put them into words, they sound the same.