November 29
You live as if you would live forever; your frailty never occurs to you. Like mortals you fear everything — like immortals you desire everything.
On the Shortness of Life, 3
Listening mode
You live as if you would live forever; your frailty never occurs to you. Like mortals you fear everything — like immortals you desire everything.
When you waver between two possibilities, the hesitation can look very reasonable. You don't want to rush anything or make a mistake that can no longer be put right. This caution reckons with finitude: with consequences that remain, and with strength that won't stretch to every detour.
At the same time, you don't want to give up either of the two possibilities. As long as you don't choose, both belong to you a little. This attitude reckons with a time without end, in which everything postponed will still get its turn later.
So two reckonings work against each other, and each seems reasonable on its own. One makes you cautious, the other insatiable. Together they produce something strange: you protect yourself from one loss by accepting another that you hardly notice. Keeping things open costs time too; it just isn't entered in any ledger.
Sometimes, in the end, it is no longer you who decides, but a deadline that runs out or an offer that is withdrawn. Then it feels almost like relief. Whether the possibility that remained was the right one, you no longer ask afterwards.
