August 3

Sometimes you think of yourself as patient because you were patient yesterday. Someone asked you the same question three times, and three times you answered kindly. Afterwards it felt like a quality you now had.

The next evening a similar question comes, and your answer is curt. The person in front of you is no different from yesterday. Only the kindness didn’t come along.

This is uncomfortable, because it calls your picture of yourself into question. What you took for a settled possession apparently had to be summoned afresh each time. And yesterday you simply didn’t notice, because it came easily. Something good you have managed can’t be put aside for later.

But the same insight also holds the other way round. If yesterday doesn’t vouch for you, today’s curtness doesn’t pin you down either. You don’t have to prove to anyone that you are really patient. You can only, at the next sentence, look again to see whether the kindness can be found, beneath the tiredness and beneath your annoyance with yourself.

Sometimes you find it only after you have apologised.