Why am I so inconsistent?
On Monday you are patient and generous. By Thursday you snap at someone over nothing. In the morning you promise yourself one thing, and by night you’ve done the opposite. The word that comes up is “inconsistent”, and it sounds like a verdict.
Montaigne wrote a whole essay about this in the 1570s. It opens the second book of his Essays and is called “Of the inconstancy of our actions”.
Driven, not going
Montaigne watched himself the way he watched other people. He found no steady character underneath, only a man who changed with the weather, with his health, with whatever happened that morning:
"We do not go, we are driven; like things that float"
— Michel de Montaigne, Essays, book II, chapter I, translated by Charles Cotton
A few pages later he goes further. There is as much difference between us and ourselves, he writes, as between us and other people.
Which portrait you are checking
Montaigne doesn’t try to find out who he really is. He takes the scatter as his material and knows himself by what he sees himself do.
That changes what “I’m inconsistent” means. Inconsistent with what? Usually with a portrait: the calm one, the disciplined one. Each day that doesn’t match gets counted as a failure, and the portrait itself is never questioned.
There is a separate page about being different with different people. This one is about different days.
What the essay leaves
Montaigne doesn’t tell anyone how to become consistent. He leaves a question: which portrait of myself am I always measuring against?
Epimelea is an app built around the existential school. The conversation carries over from one meeting to the next. The archive is encrypted on the device and belongs to the person who wrote it.
About the app: an AI therapist for long-term therapy
This page is about a school of psychotherapy. It is not medical advice and not emergency help. If you are in danger right now, contact your local emergency number, or find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.