Volume 7 · The Long Afternoon · Essay 247
Skyscraper Index
Skyscraper Index is a measuring stick. Use it on yourself before you use it on others; the readings are more honest that way.
No single score defines a person, a team, or a year. But a score honestly taken is a mirror, and mirrors, however unkind, are cheaper than self-deception.
Strip it to the floor and you find an old instruction: look carefully, judge slowly, act decently. The new name exists because the old instruction keeps being forgotten.
At the cremation ground, every speech is honest and every ambition sounds smaller. Then the bus takes everyone back to the city, and by Tuesday the lesson is negotiable again.
In the end, life asks only whether we were awake while it happened. That is all. A small tool, honestly kept, beats a large one admired.