…the house I live in…

“There is nothing that abides and is always the same.”

II.12

Let’s talk about change. We acknowledge it, and supposedly, sometimes begrudgingly, accept it. We even have pithy little mantras to toss around to prove we’re onboard with it: The only constant is change. “Change in all things is sweet.” (Aristotle) “Everything flows.” (Heraclitus) “Every morning we are born again.” (The Buddha). And so on. And though we may articulate our acceptance of change, though we may intellectualize it, it is the rare individual who actually embraces it, who can live it day in day out. To accept change is to release all we think of as lasting, not least of which is our sense of self. The ego, however once under attack, usually launches resistence. Despite our intellectualizing change, we often resist it at the subtilest of levels. If you doubt me, take an honest look in the mirror. We may talk about change, but looking it in the eye is something else altogether. 

“I who spy on myself more closely, who have my eyes unceasingly intent on myself, as one who has not much business elsewhere–I would hardly dare tell of the vanithy and weakness that I find in myself. My footing is so unsteady and so insecure, I find it so vacillating and ready to slip…” 

II.12

To accept change is to be okay with unsteady footing; it is to acknowledge life as vacillating and insecure. It is no surprise that we avoid confronting it outright. If I, however, like Montaigne, had kept an honest and steady, decades-long life appraisal it would all be there in black and white. Change. Change in me, change in the world, change in everything. 

Montaigne is a relativist. ^1. At any given moment his perspective shifts, affording him a different view of the world and of himself. As he wrote, “An oar in the water appears bent.” Perspective changes things. The Essais is peppered with references to instability, the changeability of things, and of humankind’s inability to come to grips with this reality. And although he searches for a “fixed point” from which he can drop anchor, Montaigne never finds it. His book is the record of this search, as well as his acceptance at the impossibility of resolution. His acceptance brings him tranquility. 

In the last post I defined acceptance as one of Montaigne’s great attributes, contributing to a life without guilt. It is one of the hallmarks of his famous skepticism. “I do nothing but come and go. My judgement does not always go forwards, it floats, it strays, ‘Like a tiny boat / Caught by a raging wind on the vast sea.’” II.12. When I accept that, large and small, change touches everything, myself included, I can either resist and rebel or accept. Tranquility comes with the later, pointless rage with the former. The life project is to choose tranquility and develop the discipline of spirit necessary to realize it. This is no small matter. Furthermore, it is not a pass/fail project. The only grade we receive is the grade of effort, not conclusion. This too is subject to acceptance–or, as he writes in the quote below, a matter of adaptation.

“I do not portray being: I portray passing. Not passing from one age to another, but from day to day, from minute to minute. My history needs to be adapted to moment.” (III.2) 

1. “Relativism, roughly put, is the view that truth and falsity, right and wrong, standards of reasoning, and procedures of justification are products of differing conventions and frameworks of assessment and that their authority is confined to the context giving rise to them.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, First published Fri Sep 11, 2015; substantive revision Tue Sep 15, 2020, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/