December 10
I am, to put it frankly, neither sick nor well.
On Tranquillity of Mind, 1 (Serenus’s confession)
Listening mode
I am, to put it frankly, neither sick nor well.
When someone asks how you are, there are two convenient answers. “Fine” closes the subject. “Bad” opens a conversation in which you'd have to give a reason. Sometimes neither fits. Nothing is broken, and yet something sits askew, without your being able to say where.
This state has a hard time being taken seriously, even by you. A misfortune would at least have a shape. It would demand attention, perhaps force a decision. The quiet discord, by contrast, demands nothing. It can be put off, week after week, because, really, you're managing.
What never becomes a crisis never gets treated either. You settle into it as into a room whose light is a little too dim: you can read in it, and that is exactly why you don't change the bulb.
One day you might say “neither one nor the other” instead of choosing one of the two answers. That resolves nothing. The other person doesn't quite know what to ask next, and you don't know what you could add either. You are both silent for a moment. Neither of you fills the gap with an explanation.
