You finish something and there is a small gap before anyone says anything about it. Something in you leans into that gap. Marcus Aurelius spent one short passage on what praise actually does to a thing, and his answer is that it does nothing at all. Let’s read him.
Everything which is in any way beautiful is beautiful in itself, and terminates in itself, not having praise as part of itself. Neither worse then nor better is a thing made by being praised. I affirm this also of the things which are called beautiful by the vulgar, for example, material things and works of art. That which is really beautiful has no need of anything; not more than law, not more than truth, not more than benevolence or modesty. Which of these things is beautiful because it is praised, or spoiled by being blamed? Is such a thing as an emerald made worse than it was, if it is not praised? or gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a little knife, a flower, a shrub?
Marcus’s claim is about where a thing’s quality sits. It sits in the thing, and it stops there. Praise is not one of the parts. A thing is not made better by being praised and not made worse by being left alone, because the praise arrives afterwards, from outside, and lands on something already complete.
The list of objects at the end is doing the work. He grants the ordinary cases first, the things people call beautiful without meaning anything lofty by it — a made object, a piece of work. Then he picks up the emerald. Nobody looks at an unpraised emerald and thinks it is a lesser emerald. Nobody thinks a flower in an empty garden came out badly. He is pointing at a whole set of things we already judge this way without any effort, and asking why our own work is not in that set.
Hold the two positions and look at what each one costs. If praise is part of the thing, then the thing is not finished when you finish it. It is finished when somebody says so, which puts the last step in another person’s hands, and another person can be busy, or distracted, or silent for reasons of their own. You end up with work that stays open.
The other position has a cost of its own. If the thing is complete the moment it is right, then most of what you make will pass without a word. You put it down, it is done, and nothing happens.
So what are we aiming at. We want the thing to be finished when it is finished.
Let us see where this shows up in an ordinary day. Three places.
- You cook something at home that comes out well, and you find yourself listening for what gets said about it.
- You tidy something nobody asked you to tidy, and you leave a small part of it visible so that it will be seen.
- You write a message you took some care over, and you check whether it has been read.
In all three, watch the second right after the thing is done. One question, two answers. Was I looking at the thing, or at the room.
You are not deciding anything in that second, and you are not trying to stop wanting it noticed. Watch which of the two you were looking at, and leave it as it is.