Practicing wanton thoughts

Montaigne, a good Catholic in addition to being a writer of genius, practiced wanton thoughts as a kind of spiritual discipline.

His reasoning: People who are getting old are prone to being too serious, to seeing the new as bad and the old as golden. We advance in years, looking backward. We could stand to be more engaged in the life that’s before us now.

Montaigne was a Renaissance thinker. If he were a contemporary self-help columnist, he might have put it this way: If you picture your imagination as a big, shaggy dog, take it to the park once a day and, though the rules say not to, let it off the leash. Just once a day.