My Year With Proust - Day 118

   "A whole lot more of my aunt Leonie's things, and notably a magnificent set of old silver plate, I sold, against my parents' advice, so as to have more money to spend, and to be able to send more flowers to Mme Swann who would greet me, after receiving an immense basket of orchids, with: 'If I were your father, I should have you up before the magistrate for this.' How could I suppose that one day I might particularly regret the loss of my silver plate, and rank certain other pleasures more highly than that (which might perhaps have shrunk to nothing) of paying courtesies to Gilberte's parents.  Similarly, it was with Gilberte in my mind, and in order not to be separated from her, that I had decided not to enter up on a career of diplomacy abroad.  It is always thus, impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, that we make our irrevocable decisions.  I could scarcely imagine that that strange substance which was housed in Gilberte, and which radiated from her parents and her home, leaving me indifferent to all things else, could be liberated, could migrate into another person.  Unquestionably the same substance, and yet one that would have a wholly different effect on me.  For the same sickness evolves; and a delicious poison can no longer be taken with the same impunity when, with the passing of the years, the heart's resistance has diminished."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, pp. 622-623

"It is always thus, impelled by a state of mind which is destined not to last, that we make our irrevocable decisions."  This sounds like something that Marcus Aurelius would have written in the Meditations.  It is sound, and essential, information, and one that we dole out repeatedly to our friends and loved ones, just as we ignore it ourselves.  I remember when my son was down to his final two college choices he was balancing out the merits of Saint Anselm and Drake University, and he had to admit that one of the biggest selling points for Saint Anselm was that was closer to our hometown and, thus, also closer to his hometown girlfriend at the time.  My advice was that he also needed to keep in mind the unimpressive half-life of hometown girlfriends in college; essentially, he needed to have a greater sense of the difference between the temporary and the permanent when making decisions.  Like all parents, I was free in handing out that advice when I've never good at following it myself.   We are all subject to the tyranny of the transitory.