There’s a well-known passage from Confucius that goes like this:
The Grasp mentioned, “At fifteen, I had my thoughts bent on studying. At thirty, I stood agency. At forty, I had no doubts. At fifty, I knew the decrees of Heaven. At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of reality. At seventy, I may comply with what my coronary heart desired, with out transgressing what was proper.”
That is part 2.4 of the Analects, Confucius’s chosen sayings. The interpretation is an outdated one from James Legge, which is freely available online. I’m not claiming that Legge is a very good translation, but it surely’s satisfactory for my functions at the moment, as a result of the small print of the interpretation aren’t what I’m thinking about.
As an alternative the purpose I wish to make at the moment is simply this: this passage is usually a actual inspiration in center age.
For me, I suppose you might say I used to be twenty-one once I first actually “had my thoughts bent on studying”, within the sense that’s related to this textual content. Earlier than that time I’d been in loads of discovered subjects, but it surely was once I found Buddhism in Thailand that I spotted the existential significance of that studying: I wanted to be taught to be higher. My utilitarian mixture of hedonism and political activism was leaving me depressing. I wanted to tame my cravings and develop into wiser.
However what I discovered within the quarter-century that adopted was simply how arduous that was. I informed that story on this weblog’s tenth anniversary: you need to really work at being good (to your self and to others!), and even then, it’s nonetheless going to be arduous. Even now, on the eve of my forty-seventh birthday, I can hardly even depend the variety of occasions that anger and worry and self-pity cloud my thoughts on a typical day.
In a youth-worshipping tradition like ours, 47 feels fairly outdated. And it is outdated in some vital respects: it’s considerably older than the median age of the US population, not to mention the world’s. Even the healthiest life expectancy at this age doesn’t hit 90, so half of my life might be now over. It’s referred to as center age for a motive. So it’s straightforward to ask: if I haven’t sorted myself out by now, when will I?
And that brings us again to Confucius. I wouldn’t describe my path the way in which he does; there’s a robust externalist notice within the passage, of conforming your self to a tiān 天 (heaven/nature exterior your self), which I don’t follow. However extra importantly, whatever the particular content material, what this quote tells my fortysomething self is: you’ve obtained time.
In Confucius’s period, one would have been fortunate even to make it to age 70; in an agricultural-urban society earlier than trendy drugs, most individuals would die earlier than they reached the age I’m at now. And but by his account, at 47, Confucius had carried out solely half the steps; he was solely midway there. He didn’t even know the decrees of tiān but, not to mention put them into follow: that might wait one other few years till 50, and truly following the decrees properly and effortlessly would take till 70. Getting from the preliminary intent to the mastery of it took him fifty-five years.
However he obtained there! So he tells us, anyway, and the account certain appears believable to me. If becoming good requires repetition, then practising by way of outdated age is large as a result of provides you an opportunity for lots extra repetition. And for seventy-year-old Confucius it had all paid off. Furthermore, there’s a sure pleasure within the story itself, the account of the journey: the life slowly, regularly spent in search of advantage. These 55 years from 15 to 70 weren’t only a grinding train that paid off on the finish; the method of cultivation was itself intrinsically worthwhile, and absolutely in its personal means pleasurable. Even when he’d been like most individuals of his period and died properly earlier than seventy, it will nonetheless have been price it.
I is perhaps so much much less keen on this quote once I’m really seventy, as a result of it means that by that point I actually ought to have figured every part out. However proper now it feels very reassuring, to be solely midway up the listing. The quote is ideal for center age, as a result of it jogs my memory that I nonetheless have a lot of my life left to develop. And a life spent in that development course of is a life properly spent.
