THE SCENE: If you don’t feel like you have enough time to take care of your responsibilities while still doing the things you want to do, focus on your responsibilities. Because there’s always a chance that God will provide a doppelganger to take of everything else.
THE TEXT: A knight named Hameric, of great wealth and small renown, was on his way to the knightly exercise that is called a tournament, and as he journeyed through a deep forest he heard a far-off bell ringing for the morning mass, and, though his fellows dissuaded him and disliked it, he hurried off to hear mass. He found the hermits, and after mass hasted to rejoin his companions, but lost his way, wandered all day, and returned quite late to the mass place. The same thing happened on the morrow. On the third day, guided by a hermit, he found his friends on their way back, and they congratulated him most joyfully. He was surprised at the unusual respect shown him, and feared it could not be genuine. So, calling aside an intimate friend, he asked how they had fared at the tournament. “We did very well,” he answered, “thanks to your skill.” He himself was amazed, unconscious as he was of having earned praise, and in the end with difficulty realized that the Lord had supplied him with a substitute, lest his fellow should have cause to be glad that they had [neglected] the mass, or he to be sorry that he had not; and he offered himself, with all that he had, to God and to the house of the Templars, and, it is said, strengthened them mightily.
– De Nugis Curialium, Walter Map, 12th Century AD
