Instead, he urged his readers to develop a capacity for remaining ‘available’ to situations as they arise. Similar ideas of disponibilité or availability had been explored by other writers, notably André Gide, but Marcel made it his central existential imperative. He was aware of how rare and difficult it was. Most people fall into what he calls ‘crispation’: a tensed, encrusted shape in life — ‘as though each one of us secreted a kind of shell which gradually hardened and imprisoned him’.
