June 21
If you once let your attention slacken, do not wait until tomorrow to call it back. For today's postponement becomes tomorrow's habit.
Discourses IV,12 (freely rendered)
Listening mode
If you once let your attention slacken, do not wait until tomorrow to call it back. For today's postponement becomes tomorrow's habit.
An exception needs a good reason, and usually you have one. You're tired, the day was full, tomorrow there'll be more time. The odd thing is that the reason is often true. Not much really hangs on this one evening.
But the next time, the exception hardly has to justify itself. It now has a precedent. The second postponement is no longer up against your resolution, only against the first one, and that turned out fine. Nothing happened. This is how a habit forms without your ever having decided on it: out of nothing but days on which, each time, little was at stake.
Still, you can't wish for the opposite either. If you were never allowed to skip another evening, you would treat every bout of tiredness with suspicion. Some breaks really are just breaks.
While you're in one, you can rarely tell the difference by looking at it. You're more likely to notice it in how coming back feels: whether you are picking something up again, or first have to push against something that by now almost belongs to you.
