If there’s a theme to this current lap around Montaigne, it’s my attempt to apply his final lessons of On Experience to the rest of his project. This is one of the easier essays to do just that.

His argument in On Pedantry is that knowledge should be one of life’s great joys, but our methods of training people with scholarship is a brutal waste of time, rewarding people who can memorize facts and preventing people from applying wisdom to their lives.

He’s previewing On Experience in this essay, saying that the life we lead is the best gauge of what we’ve learned in life and the moral structure we’ve created around it. It’s unquestionably an old man’s philosophy, but I’m even older than Montaigne was when he wrote it, so I find it easy to embrace.

If I were to describe this approach on my own terms, I’d call it a humble, personalized, air of superiority. That air of superiority part can obviously sound off-putting. No one wants to be in the presence of someone who revels in self-satisfaction, and even worse someone who proclaims to be better than others.

The humble element is an understanding that whatever approach you take to life, it likely cannot be ported to anyone else. You can reach an understanding of what works best for you — hence the personalized element — but also have to appreciate that your experiences and the way you integrate what life has taught you is indispensable to your stance.

Pull it all together and it’s a deep sense of confidence that the way you live your life is the best way that you know how, subject to adjustment with more experience. And it’s also an appreciation not only for other people and how they apply their experiences, but also earlier versions of yourself. It’s ok to feel somewhat superior to earlier versions of yourself, as long as you recognize that there were things you’ve done better at various points of your life that you could learn from as well.

That’s my admittedly reductionist take on Montaigne’s approach to knowledge and its application. It sounds much easier than it is. Emotion plays a much larger role in our lives than we like to admit. Even routine aspects of our lives are often driven by emotional drives and goals.

And sometimes those desires go unfulfilled and we’re left a bit empty. The hardest part of applying Montaigne’s template to life is that we not only need to mourn our heartbreaks and disappointments, we need to find a reason to keep going, even if that means doing the things once infused with emotional meaning and purpose that now feel like pure drudgery.

In my experience, having responsibilities can turn out to be a great motivator in such circumstances. If people — or animal friends — are relying on you for support, you don’t have the option of falling apart. You have to keep going even without the hope that might have driven your actions before.

Over time, those routines shake off the emotional resonances and just become part of the rhythm of life again. That, in turn, becomes part of the way that you heal and see that disappointment is only the closing of a chapter. With more time and perspective, we might even discover that this hope was merely an artifact of an imagined future, not part of our actual life at all.

Disillusionment is an inevitable part of life. The world we inhabit isn’t magical, we have no destiny to fulfill. Realizing this and going on in the face of the disappointment that results is the path to ultimate freedom and contentment.

But, more about that in future chapters.