May 26
As on a sea voyage: the ship lies at anchor, you go ashore to fetch water — along the way you pick up a shell, an onion. But your mind must stay with the ship: if the helmsman calls, leave everything and run.
Enchiridion, 7
Listening mode
As on a sea voyage: the ship lies at anchor, you go ashore to fetch water — along the way you pick up a shell, an onion. But your mind must stay with the ship: if the helmsman calls, leave everything and run.
When you are waiting for an important call, the phone lies face up beside your plate at dinner. You listen and laugh in the right places. Even so, the person across from you senses that part of you is already poised to get up.
There is little to be said against this readiness. Some things take priority, and it would be dishonest to pretend that everything matters equally. The difficulty lies elsewhere: almost everything that calls you presents itself as urgent. A message from the office lights up just like one from the hospital.
If you stand ready for every call, you end up perched on the edge of your chair wherever you are. Then even what you come across along the way is only half yours. Oddly, you might be fully at the table precisely if you knew exactly what you would get up for. The readiness would be no less, only more precise.
When the phone finally lights up, it is an advertisement. By then you already have the napkin in your hand.
