November 21

You speak differently with different people. With an old friend you turn silly sooner, in a meeting more precise, with a child slower. No one would call that pretence. Someone who struck the same note everywhere would be hard to bear rather than steadfast.

It gets harder with what isn't a matter of tone. In company you laugh at a remark you wouldn't have found funny on your own. You nod along to a judgement about someone you barely know, because disagreeing would have made the evening heavier. Afterwards it's hard to say where consideration ended and something else began.

Being alone doesn't simply serve as the measure here. Without an audience you aren't automatically more genuine. Sometimes you are just more careless then, sometimes stricter with yourself than you would ever be in front of others. There too you may be playing to an audience that sits only in your head.

A bearing perhaps shows itself less in your being the same everywhere than in whether you could stand by it if the people from the other room, whichever it is, were listening.

That question usually comes up only on the way home.