VOLUME II, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 19, SECTION 3
Skill, Reputation, Feeling
The last two sections took six. This lesson takes the last three. Skill, reputation, feeling. And each runs deeper than the last. The last of them is the deepest of the whole nine, and the least changeable in a life. When these three are told, the stretch on education is sealed.
Take skill first. Skill, today, is mostly farmed out. The child learns piano, at a class. Learns drawing, at a class. Learns swimming, at a class. Learns coding, at a class. Learns to write his characters, at a class. On one Saturday a child can run to three places and learn three skills. And these classes teach well. The teachers are trained, the method is orderly, the progress can be seen. But there is one thing the class cannot teach. A scene. A Sunday afternoon, and the fan at home has broken. The father carries it out to the balcony, digs out a screwdriver, and crouches down to take it apart. The child comes over to watch. The father says, here, you turn this one. The child turns it, his hand slips, the screw drops into a crack, and he fishes for it a long while. The father does not scold him, and does not say, leave it, I will do it. The father says, slow down, no hurry. And the two of them crouch on the balcony better than an hour. And in the end the fan turns. That afternoon, what did the child learn? He learned to turn a screw, which is a skill. But what did he steep? He steeped this. That a thing that is broken can be fixed by your own hand, and not thrown out at once. He steeped this. That to do a thing takes time, and will not be hurried. He steeped this. That my father's hands can make a thing work. And this. That I can too. Not one of these will a class give him. Because a class gives the skill, and home gives the skill, and with it a whole sense of where a person stands in the doing of a life. And that sense of place is steeped. It takes a person crouching there, an hour and more, with you. The old book on learning has a line for just this. The son of a good smith is sure to learn first to sew a fur coat. The son of a good bowyer is sure to learn first to weave a basket. Why? Because the smith spends his days patching scraps of metal into one whole, and the son, watching, first learns to patch scraps of hide into one whole. The bowyer spends his days bending wood softened into a curve, and the son, watching, first learns to bend willow into a basket. That feel, of the bending, of the patching, of coaxing a whole thing out of pieces, steeps in first. The smithing and the bow-making come after. More than two thousand years ago the old book saw it. What a home hands down is never only the one craft. It is the temper of those hands. The living education of skill is one line. The one you have, however small, hand one of them to him yourself. You can cook a dish, let him stand and watch. You can write a few characters, let him lay the paper out. You can fix a thing, let him hand you the screwdriver. You can hum an old song, hum it to him while you do the chores. Even if he never in his life has a use for it. The temper of those hands has already crossed over.
Now reputation. The word sounds like a hollow thing, a thing for famous people. It is not. Your reputation is how the few dozen people around you hold you in their minds. Your neighbors, your colleagues, your relatives, the man who runs the little shop downstairs. That impression, in those few dozen minds, is your reputation. And how is it built up? One small thing at a time. You promised to take in a neighbor's parcel, and you took it in. You borrowed three hundred from a colleague, and returned it the next day. What you say of a man behind his back is the same as what you say to his face. You did a thing wrong, and the first thing the next morning in the office was to own it. Not one of these is a large thing. And piled up over ten years and twenty, they pile into the weight of a person. And the whole of that piling, your child is watching, from the side. He sees you keep the promise and return the money and not talk behind backs and own your errors. And he steeps this. That a person is to stand up straight before others. Or else he sees the other thing. He sees you forget what you promised, and dodge the debt as if it never was, and be one man to the face and another behind the back, and reach first, when you have erred, for someone to push it onto. And he steeps this. That a person may live like that. Confucius said a line. The junzi is ashamed to have his words run past his deeds. Words running past deeds is the commonest way of living there is today. On the feeds, more is said than done. In the meetings, more said than done. At the table, more said than done. And Confucius says, this is a thing to redden at. The living education of reputation is one line too. Say less, do more, and say it after it is done. And this line you need not speak to the child. You have only to live it, and he steeps it of himself.
And the last, feeling. This is the deepest of the nine. How a person voices love, how he handles his anger, how he faces grief, how he owns his fear. All four are steeped from the parents, and none is changed in a lifetime. He carries them into his marriage, into the bond with his own child, into every dealing with a friend, a colleague, the world. Some scenes. A child who saw, from small, that his parents fought by throwing things, and shouting, and going cold for three days, will fight his own wife, in time, by throwing things, and shouting, and going cold for three days. A child who saw, from small, that his parents in grief shut the door and let no one ask, will shut the door in his own grief. He will not open his mouth, because he never once saw a grown-up open his. A child who saw, from small, his father in fear still hold hard and say what is there to be afraid of, will hold hard in his own fear. And a lifetime, he will not get out the two words, I am afraid. And there is one that is hardest of all for a Chinese parent. Love. A Chinese parent, for the most part, never once in a lifetime says to the child, I love you. It is not that they do not love. Their love is in the bowl of soup carried into the room late at night. It is on the road to the station at four in the morning. It is in the moment the man, scolding with his mouth, who told you not to dress warmer, has already, with his hands, taken off his own coat. The love is there, and it is heavy past bearing. But there is one thing the child did not steep. He did not steep that love can be spoken. And so he too, a lifetime, cannot get it out. He too will carry in the soup, and drive at four in the morning, and take off the coat while he scolds. And he too, a lifetime, cannot say the three words. Generation on generation on generation. The soup is always there. The words never are. This book passes no verdict here. It does not say a Chinese parent ought to learn to say I love you. This book gives no formula, ever. It only sets the thing out, for you to look at once. In feeling, what you steeped is what you pass on. If you were never held, you can hardly hold. If you never once heard a soft word, you can hardly say one. This is not your fault. It was steeped into you by your parents, and your parents too were steeped. Count the chain upward, and you cannot see its head. And yet, at you, it can be broken once. And only you can break it. Confucius said a line, about the mourning rites, and yet it says the root of the whole matter. A child is born, and it is three years before he leaves his parents' arms. Three years. A thousand days and more, held, hushed, laid to sleep against the heart. Those three years are the bedrock of a person's whole feeling. He could not yet speak then, could not yet walk, could not yet keep a memory. But his body remembered. It remembered what it is to be caught and held. And a person who was caught and held when he was small knows, a lifetime, how to catch and hold another. This is the living education of feeling. It is not in the reasoning. It is in the one time you hold him, in the five minutes you let him finish crying, in your not turning your back when it is you who are crying.
Nine told. Time. Energy. Attention. Relationships. Trust. Health. Skill. Reputation. Feeling. These nine are the whole capital of a person's life, and the whole of what he can give to the next generation. The fifteenth chapter had the dye vat, and Mozi standing before the dye house saying, dyed in blue it comes out blue. Now you know what the vat is made of. The vat is these nine. How you spend your time, how you use your energy, where your eyes go, how you treat people, whether you keep what you promise, what time you sleep, whether a skill is in your hands, whether you stand up before others, how you give your love. These nine are the color of the vat. And your child, from the day he is born, soaks in this vat. Eighteen years. And at the end of the eighteen he is lifted out. And what color is he? You knew already.
That closes the nineteenth chapter. Pull it together. Skill, and the one you have, however small, handed to him yourself, for the class teaches the skill and not the temper of the hands, and the old book, the good smith's son learns first to sew furs. Reputation, the faith you stand on before others, piled from small things with the child watching, and Confucius, the junzi is ashamed to have his words run past his deeds, so say less and do more. Feeling, the deepest and least changeable, love and anger and grief and fear all steeped, and the Chinese parent's soup always there and the words never, generation on generation, the chain able to break at you, and Confucius, a child is three years leaving his parents' arms, and the one held young knows how to hold. And the nine together are the vat, eighteen years, the color you knew already. That is the nineteenth stake this chapter drives. Education is not in the school, not in the curriculum, not in any tool. Education is in how you spend the nine things in your hand. How you live is what the child steeps. And this, no one can do for you.
And there the stretch on education is told. From the five layers of the yard in the fourteenth chapter, to talent, to the teacher's way, to teaching and steeping, to the five great minds of the West, to one tree becoming a forest, to the one word the new thing lacks, and back at the last to these nine in your own hand. Six chapters, eighteen sections. And after so wide a circle, it comes to one line. The vat, you have to be it yourself.
But the matter is not finished. The end of the eighteenth chapter left a line unopened. This book said, the new thing cannot transmit the Way, and this is not its fault, and the fault is on those who set it in that square. That line is too large. What it drags in behind it, one chapter cannot hold. Who is making the thing? And making it, what is in their minds? Who is selling it? And selling it, what do they say, and what do they leave unsaid? Who is governing it? And is it governed? Can it be? A tool sits in the world and says not a word of its own. But who makes it, and who sets it down, and in which square it is set, all of that is the work of people. And this, at the last, is the thing this whole volume of cultural institution has to take up head on. From the next chapter, tools. From the beginning. From twenty three centuries ago, and the line in the Records of the Examination of Craftsmen, the wise create the thing. See you in the next chapter.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.