"How to Live to Oneself" | A Guided Contemplation

Perennial Meditation with Montaigne

📿 Perennial Meditations

This series delivers guided contemplations (via the Perennial Meditations YouTube channel) on the art of living. Inspired by the words of “Stoics, Saints, and Sages,” these short contemplations are designed to help us think deeply about what it means to live an intentional life.

---

---

“How to Live to Oneself” | A Guided Contemplation with Montaigne

This meditation (or guided contemplation) explores selected passages from Michel de Montaigne’s essay On Solitude. Montaigne’s famous Essays were a project of self-discovery. He said of the endeavor, “I myself am the subject of my book.” He believed his essays were analogous to an artist producing a self-portrait. But unlike the artist in his studio who catches in pencil or paints a fixed likeness of himself, Montaigne discovered that he could never pin down a stable ‘I’ which he could study: his ‘I’ as the writer was ever-changing.

“Let us leave aside those long comparisons between the solitary life and the active one.

…let us make our happiness depend on ourselves; let us loosen ourselves from the bonds that tie us to others; let us gain power over ourselves to live really and truly alone — and doing so in contentment.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to live to oneself.”

— Montaigne, On Solitude

—

Thank you for listening; I hope you found something useful for daily life.

Until next time, be wise and be well,

J.W.

P.S. If you enjoyed it, consider subscribing to Perennial Meditations on YouTube.

---

---