October 3
This, then, is what to seek: evenness. For calm does not mean that no storm would ever come — but that no storm can any longer take the helm out of your hands.
after “On Tranquillity of Mind” (freely developed)
Listening mode
This, then, is what to seek: evenness. For calm does not mean that no storm would ever come — but that no storm can any longer take the helm out of your hands.
Agitation rarely announces itself as agitation. It speaks in your voice and brings its reasons along. If, on the same evening as an argument, you decide to end something for good, it doesn't feel like losing control but like clarity. At last you see how things really are.
That is where the difficulty lies. From the inside, you can hardly tell whether you are making a decision or whether it is simply happening to you and you are only signing it. Only later do you sometimes recognise sentences that sounded like conviction at the time and now sound more like haste.
The agitation wasn't blind, though. Often it had noticed something that, when calm, you had long passed over. If you distrust it on principle, you lose that perception too.
There is still a test, if not a reliable one: urgency. What you know tonight you would probably still know tomorrow. If waiting until then nonetheless seems unbearable, that says something, about the matter or about the night. Which of the two is hard to tell on the same evening.
