The best thing that happened to me this year was meeting Montaigne, my soulmate from the 16th century (who was born “one day after me”).
I imagine seeing him across centuries, and I would find this short man without the conventional “men stature” incredibly beautiful and charming. He was brought up with an ease where he could abandon whatever that bored him, yet as an eight-year-old boy his creativity started to shape from reading a Renaissance compendium of fairy tales (Metamorphoses, to be exact). Retiring from law and politics, Montaigne pursued nothing but gaiety at his countryside chateau, enveloped in his fear of dying on the horseback while riding occasionally.
But this “real life encounter” with him only moved me profoundly, when he claimed to have the worst ability to memorize, “a monstrous deficiency”. How blessed and cursed are we both! “People with good memories have cluttered minds, but his brain was so blissfully empty that nothing could get in the way of common sense. Finally, he easily forgot any slight inflicted on him by others, and therefore bore few resentment. In short, he presented himself as floating through the world on a blanket of benevolent vacancy.”
We were forced to be awfully honest with each other: as the old saying goes, “bad memories make bad liars”.
I couldn’t help wondering if it’s our forgetfulness or sluggishness that connect us at the core. Not to mention he made a whole principle of living by approaching everything with gentleness and freedom, without rigor or constraint.
Now let me make a new wish upon our brief conversations exchanging concise anecdotes (since we both couldn’t remember much): read a lot, forget most of what I read, and be slow-witted.
