November 6
Whoever desires nothing for himself fares well in all things; / for him the course of the world is full of his own will.
The Cherubinic Wanderer (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Whoever desires nothing for himself fares well in all things; / for him the course of the world is full of his own will.
There is a way of wanting nothing that is really caution. You say you don't mind how something turns out, and what you mean is: then it can't disappoint you. The wish hasn't gone. It has only made itself unrecognizable.
Rarer is a wanting that stays strong but doesn't end with you. You want a problem to be solved, not necessarily for you to be the one who solves it. From the outside, the two look the same. You work, think things through, put forward suggestions.
Often they can only be told apart when someone else finds the solution. If what mattered to you was the thing itself, then what you wanted has now been achieved. And yet something in you may tighten, a small loss that gives away that part of the wish was about you after all.
You can hardly work this share out in advance. It makes itself felt only when things go differently than you expected, and sometimes it doesn't show up at all. Then you are glad of the solution and notice only in the evening that not once did you think of yourself.
