COVID, Montaigne, and Attentiveness

For many people in my circle of care and friendship, COVID has brought a profound sense of loss, a sense of fragility. I feel that too, quite acutely. But perhaps, right there, is an opportunity for reorienting. Perhaps such a seeping sense of impermanence reasserts an existential truism common to many wisdom traditions—the centrality of attention and mindfulness to a good life.

As Bakewell’s splendid biography highlights, Montaigne's essays repeatedly point us to that theme, so much so that the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty describes him as someone who put "a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence" (60). Such a commitment to attentiveness only intensified as Montaigne got older. "Knowing that the life that remained to him could not be of great length, he said, 'I try to increase it in weight, I try to arrest the speed of its flight by the speed with which I grasp it…. The shorter my possession of life, the deeper and fuller I must make it" (61).

Few life-truths press upon us with greater alacrity, regardless of age. But how to grow into it?

On Attention and the Flow of Time

There is this section in Sarah Bakewell's bestselling biography of Montaigne How to Live, where she writes about the centrality of attention—that one indispensable ingredient, or rather capacity, for living well that Montaigne so admiringly mastered and embodied. Along those lines, he repeatedly reflected on the connection between attuned awareness and the thickening of time’s flow. In fact, as he got older

his desire to pay astounded attention to life did not decline; it intensified…. Knowing that the life that remained to him could not be of great length, he said, “I try to increase it in weight, I try to arrest the speed of its flight by the speed with which I grasp it…. The shorter my possession of life, the deeper and fuller I must make it.” He discovered a sort of strolling meditation technique: When I walk alone in the beautiful orchard, if my thoughts have been dwelling on extraneous incidents for some part of the time, for some other part I bring them back to the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, and to me. At moments like these, he seems to have achieved... an ability to just be.

An ability to just be. Synonyms: to dwell; to rest; to be silent; to be present; to be grateful; to be receptive; to be in awe; to be content;… One of the lessons I take to heart from the book of Ecclesiastes and many a Psalm, for sure...