Sufficient Phlegm

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers. — Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam.

Ideally we will hold no opinion, and therefore have none to defend. For what’s an opinion but one more way of living in, and clinging to, the past? We may believe nothing has changed since we arrived at the opinions we hold; but we hold them as means of security against change, in the world and in ourselves. The truth, though, is always in the present. And we can’t begin to recognize and live the truth until we are vitally and gratefully alive to the present. Awake in this way, we see that certainty and belief is also a prison.

If a tree held opinions, would it be a haven for birds?

If a lake held opinions, would it be a mirror for the stars?

Do day and night pass judgment on each other?

Thoreau’s journal, entries for March 1 and March 2, 1854.

In correcting my manuscripts, which I do with sufficient phlegm, I find that I invariably turn out much that is good along with the bad, which it is then impossible for me to distinguish — so much for keeping bad company; but after the lapse of time, having purified the main body and thus created a distinct standard for comparison, I can review the rejected sentences and easily detect those which deserve to be readmitted.

Read the thirty-ninth chapter of Middlemarch.

September 30, 2023.

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