July 2
I kept a little book and each day marked down where I had fallen short of my resolutions. Whoever keeps an honest account of himself finds it harder to lie to himself.
Autobiography (freely rendered)
Listening mode
I kept a little book and each day marked down where I had fallen short of my resolutions. Whoever keeps an honest account of himself finds it harder to lie to himself.
When you talk about yourself, you mostly speak in summaries. You're fairly patient, usually punctual, not especially one to hold a grudge. Sentences like these rarely come from lying. In memory the individual days wear smooth until only a tendency is left. And a tendency can be read kindly.
An exception easily stays an exception as long as you don't lay it beside the next one. Only when you start counting does a pattern sometimes show: always with the same person, always at the end of a long week.
But counting has a blind spot too. You decide for yourself what counts as a failing. Being late is easy to note down; the cool reply is already harder. Whatever you don't recognise as a lapse at all appears nowhere. A careful record, of all things, can then feel complete, because it is so thorough.
It shows most clearly, perhaps, on the day someone holds against you something you have no column for.
