Welcome to The PATH — a weekly reflection with three timeless insights into daily life. This week’s reflection searches for ancient lessons in the Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Life, Death, and Dancing.
1. Life
What does it really mean to live a life? In his Essays, the sixteenth-century philosopher Michel de Montaigne wrote, “Learning to live, in the end, is learning to live with imperfection in this way, and even to embrace it.”
How comfortable are you with imperfection?
The writer Anne Lamott once called perfectionism the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, which is the main obstacle between you and moving forward.
Being comfortable with imperfection can help us see reality and focus on living. In his Essays, Montaigne explained,
To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.
“Life should be an aim unto itself, a purpose unto itself,” at least that is how Montaigne put it.
2. Death
A curious paradox is that meditating on one’s mortality can teach us how to live. “To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave,” observed Montaigne. If the practice of memento mori is new to you, it might sound a little strange.
My interview with David Fideler (author of Breakfast with Seneca) revealed that meditating on our mortality can help us to appreciate life.
The practice of remembering your death or memento mori is an aspect of what the Stoics called the premeditation of adversity. You contemplate negative things that could happen to you in advance, just for a moment. And one of the benefits of doing this is realizing how many things in life we actually take for granted.
When we reflect on life's uncertainty, we are forced to make the most of what we have and where we are. As Seneca stressed, “The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”
Similarly, Montaigne wrote,
“I want us to be doing things, prolonging life’s duties as much as we can. I want death to find me planting my cabbages, neither worrying about it nor the unfinished gardening.”
3. Dancing
Are you making time for dancing? We all feel accomplished when we finish a to-do list item. But do you get the same feeling when you make time for one of your hobbies or passions? Montaigne believed there was nothing more notable in Socrates than he found time to learn music and dancing and thought it time well spent.
In his Essays, Montaigne put it this way,
When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; yes, and when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts drift to far-off matters for some part of the time for some other part I lead them back again to the walk, the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, to myself.
How would spending more time doing the things you love change your life?
It’s a simple question, but it is worth contemplating. What is the first thing you remove when something needs to be canceled from your schedule? Most of us tend to put ourselves last on the priority list leading to many things that add value to our lives never being realized.
One of my favorite quotes from Montaigne says, “My art and profession is to live.” It is easy to forget that we are not our professions or titles; this is our one short and precious life. By simply prioritizing the activities that bring us joy and minimizing the ones that do not, we move closer to living a life.
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Until next time, be wise and be well,
JW
P.S. Feel free to leave a comment or ask a question!