VOLUME III, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 19, SECTION 2
Debt and the Family, the Last Two Chains
The three chains of the last section lock his daytime. These two of this section lock his nights. The fourth, likely you can guess, is the money he borrowed. The fifth, few speak of it, yet it is the heaviest chain of all: the thing he saved a whole life to gather must at the last be handed out, handed to a son or daughter, and that son or daughter may not be able to catch it.
One. The fourth chain, borrowed money
Look first at one thing: why must he borrow? Because his own money is not enough. To expand output, to buy that new machine, to take an order three times larger than in past years, to move before the rival moves, these all take money, and the little in his pocket cannot do them.
So he goes and borrows. This layer the last chapter spoke of: financial capital is the first coat of hair grown on the hide, it gathers the scattered money of tens of millions and sends it into his hand. This is no bad thing, and without this chain his factory would forever be only a small workshop. But on the day the money comes back borrowed, one thing comes in the door along with it, and that thing is called on time. Chew these two characters, it is not repay when you have money, it is on time, the day arrives and the money must be there, and whether you earned this year, whether the market was good, whether the factory ran smooth, it asks after none of it.
Two. A help in good times, a bite in bad
Borrowed money is a thing with two faces. In good times, it is a help: he borrows a million, does three million of work with it, repays principal and interest, and still has a good stretch left in hand, and he will think, I should have borrowed more. So he borrows more, the factory grows larger, the machines newer, the orders longer, and on the books, year by year it looks finer.
But in the midst of this one thing is quietly changing: whether he can sleep easy is no longer decided by how much money is on his books, it is decided by whether next month’s payment for the goods will arrive on time. And then the bad year comes: orders down by three tenths, the goods shipped out, the money pressed in the customer’s hands, yet the bank, on its day, will not shift by a day. What he must do at this point, imagine it: sell that machine just bought, sell that piece of land, cut people, cut down to the ones who followed him ten years. Last semester spoke a line, carry it back today unchanged: the firmest lock is not made of iron, it is made of the account. That account lies open on his own desk.
Three. The fifth chain, the family
The fifth, speak of it slower, this chain few speak of, yet it is the heaviest. He saved a lifetime, the factory grown from two machines to two hundred, from ten people to several hundred, and he is sixty. Now ask one line: this thing he has gathered, to whom does it go at the last?
He himself cannot carry away a single day of it, and his whole life, in truth, was only a passing of it through the hand. He must hand it out, hand it to his son, or his daughter. And so a most ordinary and most difficult thing is set on the table: that child, can he catch it or not. Walk closer, look down into what is under this person. His child has lacked nothing from small, has never gone hungry, has never stood three hours at another man’s door for a payment, has never reckoned in the middle of the night whether tomorrow’s wages could be paid. This is what he gave the child, he strove a whole life for just this, that the child need not eat the bitterness he ate. Yet this is exactly the reason the child cannot catch it.
Four. He locked himself in
See clear how winding this position is. He gives the child the best, and the child cannot grow that frame of sinew and bone he has, and the child not growing that frame, he cannot hand it out, and unable to hand it out, he cannot stop. And so the man of sixty is still chasing customers, the man of seventy is still holding meetings.
This chain, who put it on him? Not the market, not the bank, not the rival, it is he himself, it is his love. The ancestors saw this matter with an eye most cold, and most exact.
Gold and jade filling the hall, no one is able to keep it, runs the line in Laozi, the ninth chapter of the Daodejing. Gold and jade heaped through the whole house, and not one person can keep it. Notice the character Laozi used, keep. Not get, but keep. To get rests on a lifetime’s labor, to keep rests on the frame of sinew and bone of the next generation. And that frame is grown precisely out of eating bitterness, precisely the one share of bitterness he was least willing to let the child eat.
Five. The five chains, set out in full
The five chains, to here, are set out in full. The market, he cannot stop. Technology, he cannot block. The team, he cannot do without, and it is his own raising besides. Debt, those two characters on time will not shift by a day. The family, the thing he gathered cannot be kept, cannot be handed out, and so he cannot stop. Count the bad people on these five chains, how many. Not one.
Last semester spoke of that slaveholder who could not cook: his three meals, his sleep, his life, all handed into the hands of the slave who cooked for him. This person today, his days are handed into the market’s hand, into technology’s hand, into the hands of those few who hold up the work, onto the account book of the bank, onto the frame of sinew and bone of his own child. Who is high? Who is low? This question, asked from last semester to today, has always the same one answer: positions differ only in the division of labor.
Six. What this section set, crossing to the next
This section set out the last two chains. The chain of debt: borrowed money has two faces, a help in good times, a bite in bad, and those two characters on time will not shift by a day, and the firmest lock is not made of iron, it is made of the account. The chain of the family: his whole life was only a passing through the hand, and at the last it must be handed out, and giving the child the best, the child cannot grow the frame that could catch it, and this chain his own love beat out, gold and jade filling the hall, no one is able to keep it.
Speaking to here, a certain grievance may rise in the heart: then is this person not much to be pitied? Press this breath of feeling down. This section is not pleading anyone’s wrong, nor is it out to feel sorry for him. To walk close and look is not to pity, to walk close and look is to see the position. And besides, when the ancestor spoke this matter, he left a second half. Gold and jade filling the hall, no one is able to keep it, this is only the first half, and the line Laozi speaks next is the one that gives a way out. And twenty-five hundred years ago there truly was a person who did it: he first helped one ruler destroy another state, and on the very day the work was done, he turned and left. The next section asks him out.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section 3 Gold and Jade Filling the Hall, No One Can Keep It, the Move of the Lord of Tao