May 20
Only art, it alone held me back. Patience – so it is said – is what I must now choose as my guide.
Heiligenstadt Testament
Listening mode
Only art, it alone held me back. Patience – so it is said – is what I must now choose as my guide.
When a hard time goes on for a long while, what holds you is sometimes something that offers no comfort at all. A half-finished piece of work, perhaps, which so far exists only in your head and which for that very reason no one but you can bring to completion. It doesn't make you happier. If anything it demands something of you, and that is precisely what binds you.
Such a hold is strangely impersonal. It doesn't ask how you are. Nor is it a reason to think life is good. It is only a reason not to bring it to a close yet.
Patience is usually thought of as a quality you either have or don't. But you can also choose it, and precisely when you lack it. Then it is not a calm temperament but rather a deferral: you refrain from passing judgement on your situation while you are in the middle of it and can see it least clearly.
It can promise you nothing in the process. The next morning the work is still there. You write one more line and don't yet know whether you will think it good.
