Monsieur Montaigne, a walk?

For me, Montaigne is the greatest of writers, the one I read most often, the one I most would like to have dinner with, the one whose wisdom I seek never to be disappointed and the one I most consider a friend. These, from his last and greatest essay, Of Experience:

I hate to have people order us to keep our minds in the clouds while our bodies are at table.

When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; yes, and when I walk alone in a beautiful  orchard, if my thoughts have been dwelling on extraneous events for some part of the time, for some other part I bring them back to the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, and to me.

And here is the greatest reproof against our endless dissatisfaction with ourselves:

We are great fools. “He has spent his lifetime in idleness,” we say; “I have done nothing today.” What, have you not lived? That is not only the fundamental but the most illustrious of your occupations. “If I had been placed in a position to manage great affairs, I would have shown what I could do.” Have you been able to think and manage your own life? You have done the greatest task of all. To show and exploit her resources Nature has no need of fortune; she shows herself equally on all levels and behind a curtain as well as without one. To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquillity in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.

And in the penultimate paragraph:

It is an absolute perfection and virtually divine to know how to enjoy our being rightfully. We seek other conditions because we do not understand the use of our own, and go outside of ourselves because we do not know what it is like inside. Yet there is no use mounting on stilts, for on stilts we must still walk on our own legs. And on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting only on our own rump.

My great friend, we who share the same birthday – just 417 years apart – now before the sun sets, let us take a walk before dinner.

(translations by the great Donald Frame)