December 27
Like leaves that the wind scatters to the ground, so are the generations of men: leaves too are your children, leaves the crowd that cheers you or curses you. All of it buds in spring — then the wind casts it down, and the forest puts forth others.
Meditations X,34
Listening mode
Like leaves that the wind scatters to the ground, so are the generations of men: leaves too are your children, leaves the crowd that cheers you or curses you. All of it buds in spring — then the wind casts it down, and the forest puts forth others.
When a criticism stings, it sometimes helps to look at longer stretches of time. In ten years no one will remember the meeting, the sharp tone, your red face. The matter shrinks, and you breathe more freely.
Only this thought doesn't choose. It doesn't merely shrink the judgement of strangers, but just as much the praise you were looking forward to, and in the end also the people without whom you can hardly imagine your days. When you console yourself with transience, you are holding a tool that doesn't discriminate.
So you use it only halfway. Against the hurt you let it stand. With those close to you, you set it aside, though it is no less true there. That is inconsistent. The finitude that makes the stranger's judgement lighter for you does not, after all, make what is close any lighter. If anything, the opposite.
In the evening someone tells you about their day, about some small thing at the office that will be forgotten in a week. You ask about it all the same.
