Topic

Serenity

The master of this collection's serenity is Tolstoy: everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait. But waiting is not passivity, and the quotes around it complicate the picture. Montaigne's wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can — a definition of serenity as disciplined limitation rather than achieved peace. Jefferson's preference for delay over error is the practical man's version. Shaw's joking-by-telling-the-truth is here because serenity and comedy occupy adjacent territory: the person who can see clearly and speak plainly is rarely in a hurry. Rogers on everything being funny as long as it happens to somebody else introduces the comic distance that serenity often requires. Shakespeare's few words are the best words belongs here because serenity is often silence — not the silence of having nothing to say but of having nothing that needs saying right now. The collection does not offer serenity as a destination. It offers it as a practice — and it keeps asking what that practice costs.