April 27
Do you want to be of use to people? Show in yourself what philosophy can do: eat like a human being, drink like a human being, take care, marry, work — endure insults, endure a difficult brother, a father, a neighbour. Show us this, so that we can see it can be done.
Discourses III (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Do you want to be of use to people? Show in yourself what philosophy can do: eat like a human being, drink like a human being, take care, marry, work — endure insults, endure a difficult brother, a father, a neighbour. Show us this, so that we can see it can be done.
Who taught you that something can be borne? Rarely someone who could talk well about it. More likely a person in whom you saw that it could be done, and also what it cost them.
There is a peculiar difficulty in this. Someone who bears something with complete composure shows you, at first, only that they are different from you. You can admire their calm, but you can hardly take it over. Often the more instructive part is the brief moment before: the breath drawn in, a sentence left unsaid, an answer that comes later than expected.
For you yourself this is uncomfortable. Others do not test your convictions against your reasons, but against the days when you are tired. That is precisely where you are least able to make sure you set a good example. As soon as you try, you are playing a part, and the others usually notice.
Perhaps someone notices something all the same. Not that you succeed at everything. More that, after an evening gone wrong, you are there again the next morning, without making a story of it.
