June 15
Of each thing ask: What is it in its essence? What is its matter, what its cause? What does it do in the world — and how long does it last?
Meditations VIII,11 (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Of each thing ask: What is it in its essence? What is its matter, what its cause? What does it do in the world — and how long does it last?
You can often ask about the beginning of a thing with surprising precision. A friendship may have started because the two of you lived in the same building. Someone may have recommended an evening walk to you for poor sleep. Causes like these can be named, and they are true, too.
But if you ask what those same things do today, the first answer often no longer fits. You have long since lived in different cities and still call each other. The walk has hardly anything to do with sleep any more. It has become the half hour in which a thought can be thought through to the end. The cause explains why something is there. It does not explain what it has become.
The difference grows less comfortable in the other direction. Something that began for a good reason may also have long been doing something else: a habit that once steadied you may now mostly fill time. And it can still be defended by how it began.
These days you take the walk without any reason. If someone asked you this evening why you were putting on your shoes, you would probably have only the old answer.
