Day 0314

Worked on a job application, took Jess's car out, barely left the house.

Passing my driving test is the first step into socializing myself, an inching towards adulthood, approximately a decade late. The reality of personal responsibility is awakening in me, and I don't like it. I prefer to avoid all culpability, dismiss consequence and cocoon myself off from the world. Anything else immediately causes me stress.

Montaigne was enjoined to transmute self-pity into anger, and I'm aware that I have been indulging myself a little too liberally in feeling sorry for myself. Too lazy to do anything other than identify the trait, which conveniently feels like making progress, even though it isn't.

Montaigne recognized that all the reading, learning and philosophy in the world serves a man no better than complete ignorance. The simple, everyday knowledge and physical fortitude of the 16th-century French peasant worked as well for them as Montaigne's learning did for him, if not better.

All knowledge only contingent. Often just a habit, an addiction. Not unasailable truth, but airy words that dissipate at the first sign of danger. I would change all of my views and preferences in moments if I thought it would benefit me.

I have not mastered myself, and never will. I am too pusillanimous, too wracked by emotion and too lazy to do anything other than weave comforting narratives about myself, all of which are immediately jettisoned under pressure and none of which stand up to any kind of scrutiny.

Weaving the narratives post-hoc rather than sitting down and writing principles and then living by them; much easier, sounds almost as good, and yet hollow, vapid, disingenuous.