“We must run through the bad and settle on the good.”
III.13
Earlier in this series I discussed Montaigne’s famous chapter, “That to Philosophize is to Learn to Die.” Without being redundant, that chapter reflects the young Montaigne’s Stoic influences. Death awaits us, and to deeply contemplate this reality is to take away its power. “Since my earliest days, there is nothing with which I have occupied my mind more than with images of death.” And:
“Let us rid [death] of its strangeness, come to know it, get used to it. Let us have nothing on our minds as often as death.”
I.20
Stoicism taught that we have no control over when we will die. Consequently, of utmost importance is to prepare for its eventual arrival. Furthermore, on balance, it did not matter whether a life was long or short. What mattered was its quality. 1. When he wrote this early chapter, the Stoics were front and center in Montaigne’s thinking, especially Seneca. It is an over simplification, but is not incorrect to say that by the time he arrived at his last chapters, Montaigne had sloughed off much of his Stoic leanings and was charting his own course. He was also, importantly, less enamored with the notion that the length of a life was of no consequence.
“…I love life and cultivate it…” he writes in the last chapter of the Essais:
“It takes management to enjoy life. I enjoy it twice as much as others, for the measure of enjoyment depends on the greater or lesser attention that we lend it. Especially at this moment, when I perceive that mine is so brief in time, I try to increase it in weight; I try to arrest the speed of its flight by the speed with which I grasp it, and to compensate for the haste of its ebb by my vigor in using it.
III.19
Like all of us, Montaigne observed that as he aged his perception of time was one of acceleration. His antidote: attention.
Years ago, during a period of intense meditation practice, I discovered that my perception of time was likewise effected by the attention I brought to it. It manifested as some sort of Heisenbergian Uncertainty principle of time and attention.2.
As children, our days are full of discovery and we are motivated by curiosity. The days are rich and full, served up to our delight by a slow meandering river of time. But as we age life becomes repetitious; daily experiences overlap, today hardly different from yesterday. The same commute to work, the same desk, same people, and so on. As a consequence, we tune out, our attention becomes diffused. We hardly notice that the river of time is picking up speed. Time accelerates in proportion to our lack of attention to it. But, conversely, the more attention we bring to it, the slower we experience it–to use Montaigne’s words, we “…arrest the speed of its flight…” My meditation practice demonstrated the relative nature of time, vis-à-vis the attention I could muster. When successful, the river widens and yawns, and the excitment and curiosity of youth returns. Montaigne declares that the measure of enjoyment he takes in life is regulated by “the greater or lesser attention [ I ] bring to it.” As I mentioned in my previous post, he is a relativist: perception adjusts to perspective.
The Essais is nothing, if not a record of Montaigne paying attention. The early chapters are full of observations about war, politics, philosophy and cultural trends. But as the years go by, his attention grows ever more inward. His perception deepens and turns self-reflective, again and again. I like to imagine him in his castle turret, slowing down time, like a scientist fine tuning his microscope–or better, an astronomer lost in the night sky, turning in tune with the planets, every so slowly and beautifully. He motivates me to attempt the same.
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There is more to say on the topic of Montaigne’s practice of attention so I’m going to continue the theme next week. Thanks for reading!
1. “Remember that even if you were to live for three thousand years, or thirty thousand, you could not lose any other life than the one you have, and there will be other life after it. So the longest and the shortest lives are the same.” Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book II. 14
2. “…the uncertainty principle states that the more precisely the position of some particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be predicted from initial conditions, and vice versa.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
...the house I live in... 
I welcome your comments. Thanks for reading.