michel and me

my therapist (aka my wife) has me reading montaigne, or at least reading about montaigne.  i have downloaded his essays to the kindle but haven't started reading.  i'm referring to Michel de Montaigne, the 16th-century french philosopher who kinda was the first blogger (read about him, interesting fellow).

anyway, montaigne spends a lot of time looking inward and writing essays about it, kinda blogging, if you will, i think for the same reason i (and no doubt many others) write these things.  it is part of our journey and exploration, one piece along with talking with others, reading, experiencing life, etc.  he kinda just wrote things down.  and asked questions like what is it to be a human being?  and thought about it.  and empathized and sympathized.  he observed himself and others, including animals, and then looked deeply inward and tried to see it from others' perspective.  he was a skeptic in the sense that he doubted not only what he knew, or what others claimed to know, but also doubted the process of knowing.  just because you saw it with your own eyes doesn't mean it was true or right or correct.

i write all of this because i think (at least thus far) montaigne is the closest i've come to describing my current state.  and it is a great launching point for me to further explore.  so...like my friend michel, i'm going to write.

montaigne was somewhat of an accidental philosopher: he never saw himself or his life as remarkable in any way, he never proposed theories and really had no desire to convince anyone of anything.  he was actually more of a thinker.  "He did not tell us what we should do, but explored what we actually do."  i'm the same.  i just want to understand myself a little better, in order to be a better human (gotta figure out what that means first).  i don't want to find any secret or grand design or philosophy-that-explains-everything, mainly because i know those don't exist.  you have to find out for yourself, and you do that through continuous learning, experiencing, engaging, and improving.  and plenty of Guinness.

Thanks to my therapist for pointing me to Sarah Bakewell and her great series about montaigne.