For once, I wrote my monthly essay early. It was a pretty good rant against the relaxed dress code in the Senate, but then on Wednesday night a couple adults in Congress put forth a resolution and fixed that problem, so my essay is no longer current. Besides, I don’t need to be tossing out my opinion.
I went back and forth about using that essay anyway. It was already written and revised and the lazy part of me contended that it would be all right. And I’d already marked it off my to-do list.
“Use it for what purpose?” the logical part of my mind argued.
“Because I’m right,” claimed my egotistical brain. But everyone believes their opinions are correct or they wouldn’t have them.
So instead, I’ll share a French expression I learned yesterday when I was reading a magazine article. (I remember about three phrases from two years of high school French, and this was certainly not one of them.) Esprit d’escalier means literally “mind of stairs.” It also translates as “staircase wit.”
Think back to times in your life when you left a party or work (or a social gathering to watch Taylor Swift watch Travis Kelce play football) and as you descended the stairs or front steps, you thought of the perfect reply to something someone said earlier. That’s esprit d’escalier.
We borrowed that expression from the French philosopher Denis Diderot, who lived in the 1700s and after a frustrating dinner party wrote, “a sensitive man, such as myself, overwhelmed by the argument leveled against him, becomes confused and can only think clearly again at the bottom of the stairs.”
That witty retort, that perfect comeback, that clever zinger comes too late. You can’t save it for later. You’ll forget it, and besides it was for a specific moment in time that’s gone. (Like my dress code essay.) If you do remember and bring up a conversation where you can use it, it will sound planned out, rehearsed. And that’s pretty much the opposite of witty.
Nope, that sharp riposte and that I-should-have-said quip will be an afterthought.
For all the changes three centuries have brought, we humans worldwide sure experience the same emotions.
