Perennial Meditations
Perennial Meditations is an ongoing series of short guided contemplations inspired by the writings of Stoics, saints, and sages. One quote. One meditation. One practice to carry into your day.
Montaigne on the Human Condition
This is Perennial Meditations. A daily practice.
“Every man carries the whole stamp of the human condition within him.”
— Montaigne, The Essays
This is either deeply humbling or quietly liberating, depending on the day.
We spend considerable energy maintaining the impression that we have things more or less together—that the anxiety, the pettiness, the envy, the self-doubt, the moments of cowardice and smallness are exceptions to who we really are rather than features of the common human inheritance.
We curate carefully. We present the edited version. We assume, without quite deciding to, that everyone else is managing better than we are.
Michel de Montaigne—the 16th-century French philosopher who more or less invented the personal essay—spent his retirement in a tower library writing about himself with a candor that was almost shocking for his time and still disarming today. He wrote about his fears, his contradictions, his failures of will, his wandering attention, his body, and his death.
Not to confess or to heal, but simply to look honestly at what a human life actually contains.
What he found was not a particular man with particular flaws.
He found the human condition itself—wearing his face, living in his tower, reading his books. And the discovery was not depressing but clarifying. If every person carries the full mark of this condition. Its grandeur and smallness, its wisdom and foolishness, and its courage and fear.
Then the gap between who we are and who we think we should be is not a personal failing. It is the price of admission.
Montaigne did not think this was cause for complacency.
He thought it was cause for compassion—toward others, and perhaps most urgently, toward ourselves.
Daily Practice
Think of something you judge yourself for—a recurring weakness, a pattern you can’t seem to break. Sit with it today, not as a personal failing but as part of the common human inheritance. What would it feel like to hold it with compassion rather than contempt?
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well.
J.W.
P.S. If you found today’s meditation helpful, consider sharing it with a friend!
The timing of this message comes just as I sit mourning the loss of my brother in law. Yes, the human condition, with all its glory and trials.