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At this point the diary gradually shifts from being a place where I vent my feelings and make laconic jokes about my flaws to a place where I think about things that interest me or give me awe. To use [Visa’s phrase](https://substack.com/redirect/c0887e7e-4209-41bd-aad5-3cb5b136a96e?j=eyJ1IjoiNmdtcW1qIn0.fFUvpUEzpOrwdww3ElwErhsO964KhwdDmKUp013wugI), I began to focus on what I wanted to see more of. I moved toward the good, rather than away from the bad.
The Paradox Is That When I Accept Myself Just as I Am, I Change
Henrik Karlsson
Critical reflection of some kind is inevitable, so it would behoove us to do it well. The best guide I know to readerly judgment is our old friend Auden, who graciously summed up a lifetime of thinking about these matters in a single incisive sentence: “For an adult reader, the possible verdicts are five: I can see this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don’t like it; I can see this is good, and, though at present I don’t like it, I believe with perseverance I shall come to like it; I can see that this is trash but I like it; I can see that this is trash and I don’t like it.”
The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction
Alan Jacobs
Montaigne then reveals a hidden door, suggesting that we might escape by learning to get along without any such opinion. He condenses this thought into a skeptical motto, Que sçay-je?, “What do I know?”—the motto he had inscribed on that medallion bearing the image of scales.
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