Why We Live Beyond Ourselves — The Essays of Montaigne

We are never present with ourselves, Montaigne says. Fear, desire, and hope keep pushing the mind past the hour it actually has. Seneca calls the mind anxious about the future unhappy. Plato pairs two commands: do your own work, and know yourself. Nature, in this account, cares more about keeping us moving than about letting us sit still and be content.

The essay then watches people spend that hour on a name they will not hear. Kings are mourned by rule, not by character. Bones are carried. Bodies are boiled so they can travel home. A man binds his son, under oath, to cook him after death so the remains can be moved. Funeral orders eat the last conversation. Reputation after death is treated as if it were still a job a living person could hold.

Montaigne will not call that prudence. The present is the only place a person can actually work. Planning has its hour; anxious rehearsal of a future audience does not. The rest is a rehearsal for people who are not in the room, and who will not send word back. Do your own work in this hour, he says, and know the person doing it.