VOLUME II, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 19, SECTION 2

VOLUME II, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 19, SECTION 2

Relationships, Trust, Health

The last section took the first three, time and energy and attention, which are all about where you put your heart. This lesson takes the next three. Relationships, trust, health. And these three share one thing, unlike the last. About these three you say not a word. The child sees them whole, and steeps them whole into his body. You could not hide them if you tried.

Take relationships first. Many parents pour the whole of their effort into how I treat the child. Kinder to him, more patient with him, more time for him. That is right, of course. But there is a thing many never think of. What a child learns about relationships from you, he learns mostly not from how you treat him, but from how you treat everyone else. Look at some scenes. The first. Your mother calls, and goes on for half an hour, all of it trifles. You listen rolling your eyes, and at last you say, impatiently, all right, all right, I know, I am busy, and hang up. The child is right there, and says nothing. Thirty years on, you are old, and you call him, and go on for half an hour of trifles. And how does he take it? He is not paying you back. He is only doing the thing he watched, and learned, when he was small. The second. The man bringing the food to the door is ten minutes late. Your first word is, why so slow? He offers an apology, and you do not so much as lift your head, and you shut the door. The child is right there, and says nothing. And one day, seated in a place with a little power, facing a person who can do nothing to him, what will he do? The nine whole chapters of torment in the first semester grow out of a second like this one. The third. Your wife and you do not agree, and it becomes a fight, and halfway through you slam the door and go out. You come back at night, and the two of you say nothing, and sleep apart, and in the morning it is as if nothing happened. The child is right there, and says nothing. And one day, in his own home, when he and his partner do not agree, what will he do? He will slam the door. And come back, and say nothing. Because in his body, that is how a conflict is handled. He did not choose it. It was steeped. The fourth. Your friend comes to visit, and after he has gone, you and your wife, in the kitchen, take the man apart from head to foot. The child is right there, and says nothing. And how will he come to see the word friend? See it clearly. The living education of relationships is not in how well you treat the child. It is in how you treat the ones who are not the child. Mencius said a line. Treat the elders in your own family as elders, and extend it to the elders of others. Cherish the young in your own family, and extend it to the young of others. Mark that word, extend. Push it outward. To be good to your own family is nothing much. That is instinct. The wolf does it, and the bird does it. The real skill of relationships is that extending. Whether you can push it out to the one who is nothing to you, the one you could perfectly well ignore. And whether you can push it out, the child is watching. If you cannot, then however good you are to the child at home, what he steeps is this. To an outsider, one may be that way. And one day, he too will be somebody's outsider.

Now trust. Trust sounds like a large thing. Whom to trust, whom not to, how far, when to hold something back. But its starting point is small, small enough that you would not notice it. Its starting point is whether you did the thing you promised him. A scene. On Wednesday you promise the child, this Saturday, dad will take you to the zoo. The child is glad for three days. He tells his classmates. He lays out his favorite clothes. He cannot sleep the night before. And on Saturday morning you say, not today, dad has something to do. The child cries. And you say, what is there to cry about, next week. And next week you forget again. What did the child learn? He did not learn I did not get to the zoo. He learned a grown-up's word need not count. And that one follows him a lifetime. His own promises need not count either, because in his body a word never had to count. And he cannot bring himself to trust another's promise to him, because in his body a thing promised was never sure to be done. Confucius said a line, and a hard one. A person without trust, I do not know what he can do at all. I do not know what he can do. Those five words Confucius all but sighed out. Let a person lose his trustworthiness, and no other ability he has will hold him up. And this trust, where does it steep into a person from? Not from a textbook. From the small things his parents promised him when he was little, and whether they were done. Done once, done twice, done ten times, and a thing grows in his body. A word said is a word to be kept. Done the other way, broken once, twice, ten times, and the other thing grows. It was only talk. The living education of trust is right here. No grand reasoning is needed. Only that you hold to one thing. What you promise the child, however small, do it. And what you cannot do, do not promise in the first place.

Now health, and this is the one with the strangest turn in it. Because it is the only one of the nine where what you do to your own self is exactly what the child steeps. Watch. You stay up, night after night, to one and two in the morning. And you tell the child, go to bed early, it is good for you. Will he go to bed early? He will, while he is small, because you make him. But at eighteen, gone from your house, with no one minding him, what time does he sleep? He sleeps at one and two. Because in his body, a grown-up is a thing that sleeps at one and two. Your go to bed early was said to a child, and he is a grown-up now. You skip breakfast, you bolt your food, you eat yourself sick when your mood is bad. And you tell the child, eat properly. How will he eat, in time to come? You are unwell, and you tough it out, and you will not see a doctor, and you say, a small thing, it will pass. And when he falls ill, in time to come, what will he do? You come home spent from a long day, and pour the day's whole temper out on the people at home. And when he comes home spent, in time to come, what will he do? See it clearly. In health, the words out of your mouth count for nothing at all. The child does not listen to what you say. The child watches what time you sleep. The Classic of Filial Piety has a line you have surely heard. Your body, your hair, your skin, you received from your parents, and dare not lightly harm them, and this is the beginning of filial care. That line was always said to sons and daughters. Cherish your body, for this body is your parents'. But read it once turned around. You wreck your own body. You stay up, you eat yourself sick, you tough out your illnesses, you never move. You think you are only wrecking your own? You are at the same time teaching your child how to wreck his. The very body he will have to use for a lifetime. And just now he is soaking in the sight of you.

Three taken, and look back a moment. The time and energy and attention of the last section still had something willed in them. You can choose where to put your time, whom to save your energy for, whom to turn your eyes toward. Those you can decide. And these three of this section, you cannot decide. How you treat your mother, the child watches. Whether you did the thing you promised, the child remembers. What time you sleep, the child watches. You say not a word, and not a word will hide it. The first section of the fifteenth chapter gave the first mark of steeping. It is unintended. Anything staged on purpose for the child to see is a performance, and the child can tell. These three are exactly the ones you cannot perform. Because they are not the business of a day or two. They are the business of a year and a year and a year. You can put on an act for three hours in front of a guest. You cannot put on an act for eighteen years in front of your own child. So these three are the truest three. And the three with nowhere to hide.

So here is where this section leaves us. The middle three of the nine. Relationships, learned not from how you treat him but from how you treat others, your mother and the man at the door and your partner and the friend behind his back, and Mencius, extend it to the elders of others, the skill being that extending, out to the one you could ignore, with the child watching. Trust, starting small, in whether you kept the promise, the broken word teaching him that a grown-up's word need not count, and Confucius, a person without trust, I do not know what he can do, the trust steeping from small kept promises and not from a book. Health, where your words count for nothing and he watches what time you sleep, and the Classic of Filial Piety, the body received from parents and not to be harmed, turned around, so that to wreck your own is to teach him to wreck his. And the three share this. You say not a word, and not a word hides them, and eighteen years cannot be performed. That is the second part of the nineteenth stake. Relationships, trust, and health are the three you cannot fake, and the child steeps not your words but you. So the last three? Skill, reputation, feeling. And each of these runs deeper than the last. The last of them, feeling, is the deepest of the whole nine, and the least changeable in a life. The next section takes them up, and seals the stretch on education. See you there.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.

SECTION 3  Skill, reputation, feeling