August 17
“Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live at the right moment. All the rest — ruling, amassing riches, building — is mere accessory and ornament.”
Essays III, 13 (freely rendered)
Listening mode
“Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live at the right moment. All the rest — ruling, amassing riches, building — is mere accessory and ornament.”
What you have built, earned or achieved can be listed. It has outlines, you can point to it, and it remains even when you aren't looking. That on a particular evening you kept silent at the right moment, or left in time, leaves nothing behind. Whatever happens at the right time is absorbed into what it makes possible.
That is why you usually notice it only from the reverse side. The missed moment stays in your memory: the sentence that came a week too late, the visit you put off until later. The one you caught doesn't stand out, because nothing is missing.
You could turn this into a resolution to become more attentive and to seize the right moments deliberately. But then they quickly turn back into something you collect and want to show, one more achievement. And anyone who keeps checking whether a moment is the right one is already standing a little beside it.
Perhaps you are more likely to recognise it by something incidental: afterwards you have nothing to tell, and still it doesn't feel as though you missed anything.
