Doing It Though It Can't Be Done

Reading it step by step

This is the last page of the second theme. We set out from home, went by way of friendship, and walked into society. To finish, let's hear what a gatekeeper thought of Confucius.

Zilu spent a night at Stone Gate. At dawn the gatekeeper asked where he was from. “From the house of Kong.” “Ah, the one who knows it can't be done, and does it anyway?”

First: the line was meant as mockery. In a chaotic age, many clear-sighted people chose to withdraw from public life, and the gatekeeper was probably one of them. He understood the times and he understood Confucius, which is why he thought him a fool. Yet that jibe became the most accurate portrait of Confucius ever drawn; an outsider's verdict is often the fairest. Two ploughing hermits did the same. Asked by Zilu for the ford, one heard that the man in the carriage was Kong Qiu and said only, “Then he knows where the ford is.” The river crossing stood for the crossing of life. A barb, but also recognition.

Second: why didn't Confucius withdraw? He never pretended not to want a post. Zigong once asked, slyly: if you had a fine piece of jade, would you lock it in a box or sell it to a good merchant? “Sell it, sell it! I'm waiting for a buyer.” When Lu ignored him, he left so slowly that his students urged him on. It was his parents' land; he hoped the duke would call him back. Once, a recluse urged Zilu to stop following Confucius around.

Look back over these eight pages. We care for our parents because our hearts won't rest otherwise. We make friends to walk the right road together. We put ourselves in others' place, keep to the Way before wealth, and aim for a world where everyone is settled. None of it is ever finished. But every day you can do a little: a phone call to your parents with no hurry in it, one step of extra thought for a colleague, a small change in something you know you can't change completely.

Knowing it will never be finished, do it anyway. That is what it means to say yes to one another.