October 24
To be everywhere is to be nowhere. Whoever spends his life travelling has many hosts and no friends. The same holds for minds: tasting many things fleetingly does not nourish.
Letters to Lucilius, Letter 2
Listening mode
To be everywhere is to be nowhere. Whoever spends his life travelling has many hosts and no friends. The same holds for minds: tasting many things fleetingly does not nourish.
At the beginning, almost anything gives you a kind welcome. When you take up an instrument, a language or a craft, progress comes quickly. After three weeks you can play a song, greet someone, show off a first lopsided stool. Every step stands out, even to you.
At some point it becomes hard going. You have been practising the same passage for days, and it hardly sounds any different. That is exactly when a new beginning beckons, again with quick successes and the pleasant feeling of being on your way.
In this way you can have been welcome in many fields without any of them really knowing you. That is not a wasted life; some of the trying-out was simply lovely. But the hard-going phase has something the beginning lacks. That is where the thing starts to answer you: your hand grows used to a grip, and a recurring mistake shows you where you get stuck every time.
Whether you stay is rarely decided by the first enthusiasm. More likely on an ordinary Tuesday, when the passage still doesn't sound right and you open the book anyway.
