Montaigne's Beams & The Right to Be Uncertain
Michel De Montaigne, skeptic, writer, & haver of thoughts, writes about almost anything that crosses his mind, from his painful goes with kidney stones, to cannibalism. What is so admirable about Montaigne is not what he understands but how he respects what he finds incomprehensible. He treats the mysterious with care & doesn’t attempt to explain it away. After all, it is said that he coined the phrase, “but what do I know?”.
Montaigne seems like the kind of guy to ramble on about something like cannibalism only to laugh it off at the end. He’s the guy who loves to sit back and chew the fat with anyone light-hearted enough to hang.
He retired from his day job at the ripe old age of 38, having worked in courts and held some local political positions, all which he dreaded. The way I see it, he stepped away from public life in order to to do more nothing, & other than his desire to stop doing what he didn’t enjoy, it doesn’t sound like he had much of a plan. Following this attitude of avoiding-what-you-don’t-like is about as alpha as it gets.
The fact you don’t want to should be enough reason to do anything, and you shouldn’t try to convince yourself (or guilt yourself) to continue on a path you don’t like, especially when it comes to something as serious as a career. It’s not healthy, nor sustainable. Unejpyable tasks will only compound, and doing enough of them over a long enough time will break you. Montaigne knew this. He could have been an aristocratic celebrity like his father, but instead, opted for a life of pontification and isolation, which suited him more. And props to him for that, it takes serious brass to do what you like, especially when the cost is giving up the more comfortable path for the more uncertain life of a craftsman.
