VOLUME III, SEMESTER 4, CHAPTER 42, SECTION 2
The Decades of Labor: The Rule of Labor Keeps the House
Last section looked at the two ends of a life, both ends measured by that rule that does not ask what is put in. This section looks at the middle. This middle stretch, counted from the day he earns his first wage to the day he can do the work no longer, thirty years to forty. In this stretch another rule keeps the house, the one this society prizes most and hangs on its lips most: how much done, how much got. This stretch has the most strength, makes the most, and is the most worn.
One, the year he was twenty-two, the rule that measured him changed of a sudden
The year he came out of school he sent out scores of resumes, ran a few interviews, found work, and at month end drew his first wage. Many remember that day, for it was the first time he took money that was not given him by another. The sum was mostly not large, yet the weight of that sum was unlike any he had taken before.
But few warned him of one thing. From this day the rule measuring him changed. The twenty-two years before, all men asked him what do you need. From this day, all men asked him how much did you do. Last month he did well, this month the number climbs. This month he erred, next month it drops. From this day others look at him and look first at what he made, and looking at himself, he too by and by turns to this way of looking.
This change is very sudden, no crossing in between, no rite, no one told him on the day he graduated. The hardest thing to fit in the first year is often not the work’s weariness; it is this turned-round asking. At home he had what he wanted, at the company he has what he did. Between these two lines lie two different rules.
The third semester spoke of the sense of the rule of labor: it is cold, and it is fair, it is not gentle, and it makes a person willing to put out strength. That thirty-eight-year-old last chapter, under the appraisal sheet, stood just at this position. The days of this stretch are passed under this rule, thirty years to forty, so it is every day, and few have ever asked why.
Two, these decades, one person must hold up three ends
To see clear why this stretch must be kept by labor, first see clear what the people of this stretch carry on their shoulders. The people of this stretch are the batch the whole society loads heaviest. He himself must eat, must house himself, must see a doctor, must keep a little room for later; this is one end. Above him are his parents, walking into the last stretch the last section spoke of, the medicine, the daily care, the runs to the hospital one after another; this is the second end. Below him is a child, walking the first stretch the last section spoke of, the school fee, the books, the interest classes, the small sicknesses without end; this is the third end. All three ends are hard, and not one can be pushed off.
Three ends, one person to carry. The people who held him up those twenty years and more, now it is his turn to hold up others. The one who will hold him up the decades after is at this hour still in primary school. He is the ring in the middle of this chain, tied to people front and back. He stands in the middle, and both ends pull him.
These three ends have one more mark. They do not queue; they press down together. The year the parents fall ill is mostly also the year the child’s fee is due, and also the time he shoulders the heaviest load at his post. What a person at middle age fears most is not the weariness; it is several heavy things striking in one and the same month.
So this stretch must have yield. Unless he does a little more, does a little better, those three ends cannot be held. The rule of labor keeps the house in this stretch, no one laid this rule down, it is that the work of this stretch is heavy to begin with: to want it to make things, the one who puts out strength must get. This is what chapter forty said, all four things are real, so no one of the four rules can be pulled out. Let this stretch not let the one who puts out strength get, and the one who puts out strength will not, and once he stops his hand, those three ends fall together.
Three, but in this stretch, the other three have not walked off either
Labor keeping the house is not the same as only it on the field. The last chapter already saw this layer clear; here we mark it once more, to join the two chapters up. He goes home and feeds his mother medicine, teaches the child his lessons, and those few hours not one cent is reckoned by what is put in, that is the rule of need, in his own home, never stopped. The tenth of each month that mortgage pins him to this job, afraid to move as he likes; that is the shadow of the wall. The housing fund he pays each month, the little he saves, is in the market raising another’s shop, buying another’s machine; that is the thing capital. Four things, not one short, only in this stretch one of them sounds specially loud, loud enough often to drown the other three.
So the truth of the middle stretch is this: labor keeps the house, the four are present at once. Keeping the house does not mean standing alone. It means in this stretch the matters it handles are the most, the most vital. The other three step to the side, and not one has stepped out. What steps to the side goes on propping this stretch from beneath.
Miss this layer and a person falls into the ill the last chapter named: taking one stretch for the whole. Taking it that a person’s whole life is just drawing a wage, matching numbers, arguing appraisals, and the rest is by-business. This ill looks small, and on down it bears two very hard fruits.
Four, take one stretch for the whole, and two ills come
The first ill is forgetting where he came from. A man who owns only the rule of labor will feel with his whole heart: all I have today I earned myself, and it has nothing to do with another. But last section counted it: his first twenty-two years he earned not one cent. The milk was fed him by another, the schooling done on the public purse, the sickness held by health cover, the road built by the generation before. The share he earned is real, and the ground he stands on was laid down first by others. A man who owns only one rule cannot see the ground under his feet, and not seeing it, he takes another’s decades of holding-up for a thing born his by right.
The second ill wounds deeper, wounds his own old age. A man who owns all his life only how much done how much got, when the day comes he can do the work no longer, how will he see himself? He will feel himself a drag, a man eating idle bread, a burden on his children. Many an old one, strong all his life, comes to this step and of a sudden cannot lift his head, and this is how it comes.
This is no play-acting; this is that rule used past its bound. He takes a rule that measures the prime and measures his own old age with it, and what it measures is of course zero. The last chapter spoke of four costs of the rule out of place, and here is the fifth: taking the rule that measures what is put in to measure one’s own life, and measuring out a shame that should not be. That line last section must be said once more: the two ends of a life, to begin with, do not ask what is put in.
Five, this stretch is the most worn, and the most easily taken for the whole
The middle stretch is the society’s most bustling, and the most easily mistaken for the whole view of a life. The book-writers, the film-makers, the number-reckoners, the meeting-holders, their eyes are mostly fixed on this stretch: how much was made, how high the yield, whether the wage rose, how many did the work of how many. Because the things of this stretch are seen, are touched, are reported in numbers. Because this stretch makes the most, and is the easiest to measure. The twenty years before and the twenty after are hard to measure, measure to no number, and so are often taken for cost, taken for burden, moved to the other ledger of the account. Yet in that other ledger sit every person’s parents and children.
But last section counted the years. The two stretches together are near half a life. To call half the days cost is to reckon this account crooked from the first. That is no cost; that is the head and the tail of this road. No head and no tail, and the middle stretch no one reaches. No one begins to live at twenty-two.
So this stretch, though it keeps the house, cannot call itself the whole. It is the stretch of a life with the most strength, and only that stretch.
One more line to be said here, lest a person hear this stretch as too bitter. This stretch, though worn, is also the stretch of a life with the most weight. The twenty years before he could only take, the twenty years after he could only wait, and only in this middle thirty to forty years can he give. Give to his own child, give to his own parents, give to a shop, a road, a schoolroom full of people he will never in his life meet. The living Lei Feng the third semester spoke of grows out of just this stretch. The weariness is real, and the giving is real, and both are to be seen.
Six, what this section sets
What this section sets is a line: the middle decades are kept by labor, yet it is only a stretch. Keeping the house has its sense: this stretch holds up three ends, unless he puts out strength they cannot be held, and to let the one who puts out strength get is plain right. Keeping the house has its bound too: above it is one more stretch, below it one more, neither its to handle, and handle them by force and trouble comes. A person in this stretch has the most strength, and most easily takes the sense of this stretch for the sense of a whole life.
The next section looks at the hardest place in this life, not the head, not the tail, but the few gaps dropped in the middle of a sudden. Fallen sick, hurt, or twenty years of work of a sudden wanted by no one. There the rule of labor of a sudden measures him no more, and who catches him, this section leaves to the next.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.