Volume 7 · The Long Afternoon · Essay 238
Self-Objectification
You may not know the name Self-Objectification, but you know the thing. This page only introduces the two of you formally.
What this concept offers is a pause — one extra beat between what happens and what you do about it. Civilisation, someone said, is measured in that beat.
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.
At the cremation ground, every speech is honest and every ambition sounds smaller. Then the bus takes everyone back to the city, and by Tuesday the lesson is negotiable again.
In the end, life asks only whether we were awake while it happened. Keep it like a good key: accessible, unlabelled, and used often.