January 21
If you carve and do not let up, even stone and metal will yield. The noble steed cannot leap ten paces in a single bound — but the tough old nag reaches the goal because it does not stop.
Xunzi: On Learning (freely rendered)
Listening mode
If you carve and do not let up, even stone and metal will yield. The noble steed cannot leap ten paces in a single bound — but the tough old nag reaches the goal because it does not stop.
When something comes to you quickly, you can easily take the first real resistance as a verdict. Until now the thing seemed to belong to you. Now a task sits unfinished, a movement won't come right, and you wonder whether you were wrong about yourself.
Someone who found many things hard from the start often never has this moment. Effort was never a sign that something was wrong. It was simply part of the work. There is a strange advantage in that: whoever began this way cannot lose anything they would have taken for a gift.
It gets difficult because you rarely belong to just one side. Some things came easily to you, others never did. Then you read the same effort differently depending on the field: here it counts as practice, there as proof that you don't belong.
Whether carrying on is wise in any given case doesn't follow from this. There is such a thing as stopping that is right. Only, you may decide on it out of hurt rather than insight. From the inside, the two feel rather alike.
