On starting again

R
Seneca · Nietzsche
2 September

You

I keep starting things and abandoning them a few weeks in. Is that a character flaw or just how attention works now?

Seneca

You ask whether it is a flaw or the age you live in, as if the answer would change what you do tomorrow morning. It would not. A man who begins many things and finishes none has, in effect, decided that the beginning is the part he wants — the rest he leaves to someone hardier. Ask instead: which of these unfinished things would you regret losing, if I forbade you to start anything new for a year?

14 September
Nietzsche joined · he has read everything above

You

Seneca, that's fair — but some things I abandon because I got what I needed from them, not because I failed. How do I tell the difference?

Nietzsche

You want a test that sorts your abandonments into the noble and the cowardly, so that you can stop asking the question. There is no such test — only the taste, afterward, of what you walked away from. Does it taste like a summit you already stood on, or like a hill you got tired of climbing? You know which. You are only asking me because you don't like the answer you already gave yourself.

Answering