Volume 4 · The Ledger and the Loom · Essay 158

Lowly Listening

Lowly Listening is a small handle on a large fact. Grip it, and the fact becomes easier to carry.

It is worth keeping in your pocket not because it is always right, but because it is always available. A tool you carry beats a perfect tool you left at home.

Ask the LIC agent at your door and the trader at his terminal — both will tell you the same thing in different clothes: money listens to discipline and laughs at moods.

Money is a good clerk and a terrible master; the arrangement is entirely up to us. Keep the name. Use the pause it gives you. That is the entire homework.