On giving what cannot be divided
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
Weil wrote this to a poet who had been paralysed by a wound in the previous war, from a life spent giving away most of what she had. She meant generosity literally, and attention as the scarcest thing she knew of.
Money is divisible and time can be scheduled. Attention cannot be given to two things at once, and it is the one gift whose absence the receiver always detects, however good the manners covering it.