November 10
What throws others down finds the wise man upright: he stands even beneath the ruins.
Letters to Lucilius, Letter 71 (freely rendered)
Listening mode
What throws others down finds the wise man upright: he stands even beneath the ruins.
In an emergency there is often someone who is the first to become matter-of-fact again. They call whoever needs calling, dig out the paperwork, ask about times and who is responsible for what. If you are that person, you may only notice later how quickly the others came to rely on it.
Your calm is then easily mistaken for being untouched. Anyone who hears you on the phone assumes you are more or less all right and asks nothing further. You yourself push the shock aside because something needs dealing with right now, and at some point it lies so far back that you can hardly find it anymore.
But staying upright and not being struck are two different things. The first needs the shock it stands against. The second would have nothing at all to stand against. From the outside the two can hardly be told apart, and sometimes not from the inside either.
In the evening, when the calls are done, you may sit in the kitchen a while longer. No one needs anything from you just now. Only now does something give way that has been waiting all day.
