It’s strange when Montaigne raises something true, but also the opposite of how he behaves. This essay lingers on the question of expertise and how people should stick to what they know best in life. He throws out several historical examples of great people who wasted time on matters they knew much less about and concluded:

On that track you never do anything worth while.

Ok, sounds good and that’s something I could build on, but two points are necessary to share: these are people who clearly did do worthwhile things with their lives, otherwise neither Montaigne nor anyone else would remember enough about them to build anecdotes around. And two, perhaps more importantly, what are the Essais if not a wild collection of amateur opining on every possible topic?

By Montaigne’s own standards, he should have written only about the mechanics of managing a city and an estate like his own. Never mind that his most interesting essays, such as the Cannibals, cover subjects he knows nothing about personally.

So, treat his essay on the doings of ambassadors with the same skepticism Montaigne espouses on most subjects. But even while applying it, I do believe that Montaigne has a point.

I’ve spent much of my life careening from one industry, one hobby, one singular obsession to another. It’s a very strange feeling when you realize a movie you’ve held in your mind as one of your favorites, when rewatched, comes across as an entirely different film. Or when musical pieces I knew by heart six years ago now seem completely foreign to me. Or when running just a few blocks now exhaust me when before I ran a marathon and numerous half marathons.

In some cases, it’s simply a matter of not keeping up a practice and getting out of habits. But in some phases of my life, I’ve thrown myself aggressively into gaining kinda-sorta mastery over something, never achieved any deep understanding, then gave it up. No wonder it didn’t stick.

It’s only in the last few years that I’ve discovered the joys of depths: returning to Montaigne and getting a true essay-by-essay understanding, watching movies scene by scene, doing similar workouts day after day. I’m finding joy now in returns, picking up the guitar again, hoping to get techniques right this time before moving on to other aspects of musicianship.

I’m running the risk, again, of claiming some perfected version of me in the present state. The humble side of that proposition is a newfound understanding of how little I really know. Even when it comes to Montaigne, my knowledge is only a fraction of what a lifelong Montaigne scholar contributes to the world.

But then again, I think Montaigne went too far in his examination and missed why his essays are so engaging. People with lots of interests and an ability to have an intelligent opinion on them are inherently more interesting than people who insist on boring you with every detail of their singular life’s obsession.

Montaigne wished to shift conversations to what others knew well because he wanted to be able to write, speak and think on those issues. That’s a valuable strategy for life.

But I agree with him that if you have this kind of approach to life, it’s best to also admit from time to time that you really don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re just saying it all in an interesting way.

Speak well, but be humble about it. Feel free to give up pastimes, but pick them back up when you have time to go deeper. These are the ways I approach these issues now.