May 17
When Heaven means to lay a great office upon someone, it first torments his heart with worry, wearies his sinews, lets him go hungry — so that his mind may grow strong and he may be able to do what he could not yet do.
The Book of Mengzi (freely rendered)
Listening mode
When Heaven means to lay a great office upon someone, it first torments his heart with worry, wearies his sinews, lets him go hungry — so that his mind may grow strong and he may be able to do what he could not yet do.
Perhaps someone asks you how you managed to stay so calm in a difficult situation. The honest answer then sounds rather unimpressive: you had been through something similar before, only you handled it worse. Back then you lay awake at night doing sums, made the wrong decisions and took a long time to notice that the next day began anyway.
Looking back, it is tempting to call that time a preparation. While you were in it, though, it prepared you for nothing. It was simply too much. Only the later situation gives it a direction, and that situation could just as well never have come. Some exhaustion leads to nothing more than a long recovery.
Still, the interpretation isn't wrong. Something really did shift back then, only not necessarily your strength. It's more that you learned where it ends and what is still possible beyond that limit. That doesn't give you a rule by which hard things would have to pay off.
When something becomes too much for you again today, you don't know what it is for. Whether anything will one day come of it that you couldn't do before is not yet settled. Even then, it won't feel like preparation.
