October 2
At noon, in broad daylight, he lit his lantern and walked across the marketplace. 'What are you looking for?' — 'A human being.' Many stood all around, and still he kept searching: not for the titles, the clothes, the roles — for the human being beneath.
Anecdotes (in Diogenes Laertius) (freely rendered)
Listening mode
At noon, in broad daylight, he lit his lantern and walked across the marketplace. 'What are you looking for?' — 'A human being.' Many stood all around, and still he kept searching: not for the titles, the clothes, the roles — for the human being beneath.
Sometimes you meet someone you know only through a role, in a place where the role doesn't apply. On a Saturday your dentist is standing in front of you at the bakery counter, with wet hair and a bag of bread rolls. You greet each other, and for a moment neither of you knows what comes next.
Until now the role had governed your conversations. It settled who asks, who answers and when it's over. Without it, you would first have to find out who you actually are in relation to this person. That is harder work than it sounds, and it isn't only about her.
Still, it would be too simple to take the role for a disguise under which the real person is waiting. Often that person shows up precisely within it: in the way someone asks a routine question and then really waits for the answer, or explains a regulation instead of merely quoting it.
At the counter she finally says something about the weather. You answer, and you both laugh a little too long.
