March 28

Some of what feels like your character is mostly something you have repeated very often. You say yes quickly when someone asks you for something, and you take this for helpfulness. Only when, for once, you ask for a day to think it over do you notice how firmly the old answer is lodged. The new sentence comes stiffly off your lips, almost as if you were acting.

Here lies a difficulty that is easily overlooked: the unfamiliar feels false, the familiar genuine. But at first the only things that seem natural are the ones you have already done a thousand times. Whether something suits you, this feeling barely reveals. It measures practice, not belonging.

That does not, however, automatically make the opposite direction right. Anyone who has long said yes too quickly may, for a while, hesitate too often, and is no freer for it. In time the new answer may itself become a habit, and then you would have to question it in turn.

At some point someone asks you for something, and for a moment you don't know which of the two sentences will come. Neither is waiting ready.