March 12
When circumstances throw you off balance, return to yourself quickly — and do not stay out of rhythm longer than it lasts. You will gain greater mastery of harmony by constantly returning to it.
Meditations VI,11 (freely rendered)
Listening mode
When circumstances throw you off balance, return to yourself quickly — and do not stay out of rhythm longer than it lasts. You will gain greater mastery of harmony by constantly returning to it.
Sometimes your annoyance at a remark lasts only a few minutes. Something else lingers longer: the annoyance at having let yourself be annoyed. In the evening you go through the scene again, and what you hear is less the other person than your own irritated tone. You had meant to be above that sort of thing.
This second annoyance looks like self-examination. Above all, though, it demands that the moment should not have happened. As long as you insist on that, it remains the centre of your evening.
Returning, then, would not mean erasing the slip. It would be allowed to be smaller than your verdict on it. It happened, it had a cause, perhaps even a justified one. It does not have to prove who you are.
The difficulty is that a quick return can also become a pose: a smile assuring everyone that it was nothing. Whether you are really yourself again, you tend to notice later. For instance, by being able to face the other person the next day without first preparing a sentence.
