There are no spare unrecorded encapsulated moments in which we can behave 'anyhow' and then expect to resume life where we left off. - Iris Murdoch

I ate and drank slowly as one should (cook fast, eat slowly) and without distractions such as (thank heavens) conversation or reading. Indeed eating is so pleasant one should even try to suppress thought. Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too. How fortunate we are to be food-consuming animals. Every meal should be a treat and one ought to bless every day which brings with it a good digestion and the precious gift of hunger.

It was not simply that I frenziedly desired what I could not have. That was but a blunt and unrefined kind of suffering. I was condemned to be with her even in her very rejection of me. And how long and how slow and how long-drawn-out that rejection would be. Still temptation would follow where she was. Endlessly she would give herself to others taking me with her. Like an obscene puny familiar I would sit in the corners of bedrooms where she kissed and loved. She would make consort with my foes, she would adore those that mocked me, she would drink contempt for me from alien lips. And all the time my very soul would travel with her, invisible and crying soundlessly with pain.

If we ignore the prior work of attention and notice only the emptiness of the moment of choice we are likely to identify freedom with the outward movement since there is nothing else to identify it with. But if we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over.