April 30
No ornament becomes a person so well as an honest, cultivated character. True grace does not come from outside — it shines out of what someone has become within.
The Book of the Courtier (freely rendered)
Listening mode
No ornament becomes a person so well as an honest, cultivated character. True grace does not come from outside — it shines out of what someone has become within.
Some of the things you now do as a matter of course were once habits you had to work hard to form. Perhaps you had resolved to let others finish speaking, and at first you caught yourself already waiting for the gap your own sentence would fit into. Back then the patience was more something you had put on, and it didn't sit especially well.
At some point you stopped paying attention to it. When someone tells you today that you're a good listener, you feel almost embarrassed. Is that a quality of yours, or just a habit that has held long enough?
The distinction is harder to draw than it sounds. Character doesn't arise alongside behaviour but, to a large extent, out of it. What was once practice can belong to you precisely because you no longer put it on show. Conversely, even genuine kindness becomes mere ornament the moment you start displaying it.
You are the one least likely to notice the difference. It lies in the moments when you aren't thinking of yourself, and those are exactly the moments you never get to see.
