VOLUME II, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 9, SECTION 2
Relationships, Trust, Health
The last section held onto the first three things torment draws off, time, energy, and attention. This section goes a layer deeper, and holds onto three that matter more, and that get quietly ruined more easily. Relationships, trust, and health. These three are harder to get back than the last three. Time lost, you can rearrange. But a relationship wrecked, a trust gone, a body broken, take years to mend, a lifetime even, and some of them never mend at all. Hold each in turn.
The first is relationships. How does torment wreck a relationship? Here is a thing many people never notice. The anger of being tormented, a person mostly cannot vent onto the one who tormented him, and so it all gets vented, in the end, onto the ones closest to him. Think about it. The one behind the window with the cold face, blocking you, do you dare rage at him? Mostly not. You still have to put on a smile and beg him to get the thing done. That swallowed, tormented rage, you can only hold in, and carry home. And once you are home, who walks into the line of fire? The spouse who opens the door for you. The child who runs over to be picked up. The parents who call to ask whether you have eaten. Your spouse asks how your day was, and you snap the question back in their face. The child is slow with the homework, and a fire that never should have gone off comes crashing down on them. How unjust it is. The one who really tormented you is untouched, still sitting there behind that window. The ones hurt by the fire you passed along are every one of them the people who love you most in this world, and least deserve to take it. Torment is like a ball, and because you dare not kick it back to the one who tormented you, you can only kick it to the ones weaker and closer than you. Kick by kick, cracks open up in your closest ties. Seeing that, how do you hold onto your relationships? It comes to one line. Do not charge the bill for the torment you took outside to the people at home. They are innocent. That fire was stuffed into you by a position and its four gears. It is not a thing your family owes you. Before you walk in the door, set the fire down outside. This is hard. But it is a gate that holds the few most important relationships of your life.
The second thing runs deeper than relationships. It is trust. What is meant here is your basic trust in the world. A person tormented enough over a lifetime changes, bit by bit. Into what? Into a person who trusts no one. The first time he is tormented, he still thinks it was bad luck, that he ran into someone in a foul mood. Tormented enough times, he begins to think, there is no getting anything done in this world without being tormented, there is nothing good between one person and another, and if you are kind to me, you must be after something. He wraps his heart up, layer over layer, as if he had put on a hard shell. He meets anyone with his guard already up, and takes anything the worst way first. This is the deepest and cruelest cut of torment. What it ruins is not one thing of yours, it is your trust in the whole world. A person who no longer trusts anyone looks armored, past being hurt by any torment ever again. But in truth he has made himself into a lonely island. He can no longer take in any real goodwill or warmth, because however well another person treats him, the first thing he does is suspect that it is false. This is a price ten thousand times worse than a few wasted trips. Seeing that, how do you hold onto your trust? It rests on one plain distinction. Keep that one person who tormented you separate from the whole world. What you ran into was that one person, poor in position, at that one window, running his one set of moves. It does not mean the whole world is like that. In this world there are people who torment you, yes. But the stranger who stops to show you the way, the little vendor who runs after you to return the change you overpaid, the person who has never met you and is still willing to give you a hand, are every bit as real. Do not sentence the whole world on account of that one person in that one seat. Hold onto your basic trust in the world, and you hold onto your lifelong power both to be treated well and to treat others well.
The third thing is the most fundamental. Health. The anger, the churning, the swallowed rage of the sections above, you may think you can just bear a while and get over. But the body does not forget. Every breath of anger you swallow is written down, for real, on your body's account. In the moment of being tormented, your blood pressure drives up, your heart speeds, your fists clench, and a fire jams in your chest. That is the body in its emergency response. Once in a while, no harm. But a person tormented every day, who swallows the fire down every day, keeps his body soaking for years in that stress. Every doctor knows that holding it in and stewing, over the long run, will break the body down. Sleeping badly, eating poorly, a tightness in the chest, high blood pressure, these are the body paying off, one debt at a time, the anger you swallowed. And here is the line from the fifth chapter. The highest dimension of culture is in the body. Torment is the same. It comes to rest, in the end, on that deepest layer, the body. To get sick with anger over one torment, is it worth it? The one who tormented you forgot you long ago, and eats and sleeps just fine, while you keep the fire he handed you inside your own body, slowly harming yourself with it. It is the most losing deal under heaven. Seeing that, how do you hold onto your health? Holding onto your health is where all the other holding comes to rest. You hold your time, your energy, your attention, your relationships, your trust, and in the end it is all to hold onto this one body. A person who has seen torment clearly carves one line into his heart. It is not worth trading my own body for a thing a position turned out. Go do the errand. But do not swallow the anger down into the body. This is not cowardice. It is the clearest-eyed kind of love for yourself.
These three, relationships and trust and health, look like three, but they are strung on one rope, tied together, so that when one moves they all move. Look at the most common picture there is. A father, out getting something done, is tormented over and over, runs five trips, and is angry for a week. That anger lands first on his health. That week he sleeps badly, eats poorly, and his blood pressure climbs. It lands second on his relationships. He carries the fire he had nowhere to vent home with him, onto his spouse, onto his child, and for that week the house has no peace, and the child gives him a wide berth. It lands third on trust. The child, watching his father's face all that week, quietly writes down inside, the grown-up world is a frightening place, and, getting anything done means you have to read people's faces. That seed of distrust steeps into the child's heart. A two-hour torment runs the whole length of this rope. It hurt the father's body, it ruined a week of the home, and it steeped a color of distrust into the child. Is that not the handing down of the last chapter? This is exactly how torment travels, from one window, along this rope, into a home, and then into the next generation. So holding onto these three is never only about holding onto yourself. When you set the fire down before your door, what you hold onto is a peaceful evening for the one you love, and your child's trust in the world, and this rope not being passed on to the next generation. A person who has seen torment clearly and cuts this rope at himself is exactly the remarkable chain-breaker of the seventh chapter.
So here is where this section leaves us. It has held onto three deeper things. Relationships, so do not charge the bill from outside to your family, who are innocent, and set the fire down before the door. Trust, so keep that one tormentor separate from the whole world, and do not sentence the world on one person, and hold your power to be treated well and to treat others well. Health, where all the holding comes to rest, so do not trade your body for what a position turns out, but do the errand and do not swallow the anger. That is the second stretch of the ninth stake. What torment truly hollows out is relationships, trust, and health, the things hardest to get back, and holding onto them matters more than holding onto time. Three are left, and they are the three most able to hold up a whole life. Skill, reputation, and feeling. Hold onto these three, and a person who has seen torment clearly has truly lived these eight chapters into his own backbone. The next section, the last of the ninth chapter and of the whole great line of torment, closes it round. See you there.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
SECTION 3 Skill, reputation, feeling, originally not a single thing