May 18

In calm times you know only roughly what you are capable of. You have an idea of it, resting on things that have gone well. But some of them went well because nothing stood in their way. Whether your composure is an ability or merely the result of favourable circumstances is hard to tell from the inside.

Only when something goes wrong do you get an answer: when a plan falls apart, when someone suddenly needs you and there is no time to think. It doesn't always turn out the way you had hoped. Sometimes you are calmer than you would have thought possible. Sometimes you raise your voice where you had believed yourself level-headed.

What is strange is where success comes from then. Rarely from the moment itself. More from habits you long thought incidental: how you listen, whether you take a thing one step at a time, whether you have learned to ask for help. The difficult situation produces little that is new. It shows what the uneventful weeks have left behind.

Still, you can't wish for such a test. That it was one, you usually notice only afterwards.