March 18
Resist the beginning. Too late is the remedy prepared when the ill has grown strong through long delay.
Remedies for Love (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Resist the beginning. Too late is the remedy prepared when the ill has grown strong through long delay.
A beginning seldom announces itself. Usually it's a small thing you could just as easily overlook: a thought you return to more often than you need to, a habit that still feels like an exception, an irritation you don't bring up because it seems too slight.
That is precisely where the difficulty lies. While something is small, it could easily be stopped. But then you would have to take seriously something that barely exists, and perhaps defend yourself against something that turns out to be harmless. That seems excessive, sometimes even petty, even in your own eyes. Later, once it has grown, the reason is plain to see. Only by then there is also more of you in it.
So the moment when acting is easy and the moment when it is well justified almost never coincide. The hesitation in between feels like waiting, like neutral ground from which you can still decide everything. But it isn't a pause. In that time, you grow accustomed.
And some things you resist early might never have become anything. That, then, you don't find out.
