HOW TO RAISE A RESILIENT KID: I AM NOT RIGHT BUT THAT’S OK

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Have you ever felt guilty when you were accused of doing something wrong, or not doing something you are supposed to do? Have you ever felt obligated to do something when you were told you have a duty to do it? Have you ever felt fear of losing something or someone when you were threaten with such plausibility? Do you like feeling stress and anxious when you desire to get something, or to lose something? Do you like the angry feeling when something bad happens, or something good didn’t happen according to what you wish? Do you like the sad feeling of losing a love one, or being betrayed by a friend? Do you like the disappointment feeling of failure? Will you feel devastated if you or your love ones are dying? Are you sure you have the mental strength to get back up and continue to live happily after a devastating experience?

If you have good health in terms of mind and body, you have everything that you need. If you have all the things in this world but not happiness and good health, nothing is useful to you. It is obvious that the paramount purpose of education is for the students’ wellbeing in terms of mind and body; everything else is secondary (such as ethic, moral, cognitive skills, interpersonal skills, social unity, job readiness, etc.). You must first know how to take care of yourself. You can’t pour from an empty cup. When you are strong, mentally and physically, you will then have the capacity to love your neighbors. You become one with abundant to give; rather than a poor guy who needs someone to supply love and compassion to you.

This blog aims to bring out the ancient wisdoms on how to live our lives to the fullest. To do that, we must be ready to unlearn some common dogmas and relearn some uncommon ideas. If you aren’t ready to hear an idea — no matter if it’s legitimate or urgent — then it won’t matter. You will reject it, miscategorize it, or mock a caricature of it. A strong grip on common knowledge (执于法) will not take you very far. You will be as common as everybody else.

Everybody thinks he is right (执于我). People think you are wrong when you are different or you have a different view from them. The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. Nobody is right, so it is OK that you are not right, so long as you are not wrong. Don’t be afraid to be not right. In fact, you should not desire to be right; you should not think like the fools and fanatics. You should not think you are right in order that you keep your brain half-empty and ready to learn new ideas. The sea can become big because it stays low and accept the discharges from all rivers. Be like the sea, have the stomach to accept new ideas, and have the stomach to forgive and accept the fools and fanatics (海纳百川   有容乃大). The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Continue to improve your intelligence (睿智), learn to think critically (i.e. not blind acceptance of any teaching), and widen your knowledge on all subjects (聪明). These are essential to gain the ultimate wisdom of lives (道).

The weakest part of your body is your heart. It can be hurt by words into your ears and images into your eyes. To become resilient, you must strengthen your heart more than anything else. To be as strong as the cliff of one thousand foots, you must minimize your desires (壁立千仞   无欲则刚). The ultimate wisdom of lives is about you and you alone. You are the most important one to yourself, the one who deserves your love the most. If you have a high level of desires (欲), you will need a lot of tangible and intangible things to fill that gap between what you need and what you want. You cannot feel happy and live your life to the fullest, and you will not look steady and respectable (like the cliff). But it takes high intelligence to minimize desires and resist temptations because we are not talking about the common types of desires. You need to resist the temptations of achieving “success” for yourself and your love ones, of having a strong grip of your life and the lives of others, of doing your “duty” to change the Nature according to your wishes, of blaming yourself for any “imperfections”. When you gain the ultimate wisdom of lives, your heart will be shielded with “golden bell” (金钟罩) and “iron cloth” (铁布纱). You will be resilient.

Some books teach you how to be resilient. You are told to stay calm and ask yourself some questions. If you fall down one day, and you are very weak, would you be able to stand back up by yourself? If you are overwhelmed by sadness, anger, fear, or physical pain, would you be able to stay calm, or listen to advice? You need to be strong. The only way to be strong is to learn the way to become strong before something bad happens. You will then be able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions. That is the meaning of resilient. Everybody who goes to the fighting ring has a plan to defeat his opponent until he gets a punch in the head; the plan becomes useless. A perfect plan is useless if you don’t have the strength to execute it. You can learn how to be resilient. But if you don’t become strong, you will not be able to spring back into shape after bending, stretching, or being compressed.

Don’t ask what the meaning of life is; life is meaningless if you are not happy. There is no path to happiness; happiness is the path. There are many things that you can be happy about your life; don’t focus on the unhappy things. There are many white spaces on the whiteboard; don’t focus on the black ink. That is why you need to be resilient; so that you can continue to enjoy the happy moments of life even if there are difficult situations from time to time.

Does anyone prefer to live without happiness?

Do you really need to have a lot of things (fame, knowledge, wealth, relationship, colorful lifestyle, delicious foods and leisure) to be able to feel happy?

Can you still consider yourself successful if you need a lot of external helps (fame, knowledge, wealth, relationship, colorful lifestyle, delicious foods and leisure) to live happily?

Can you consider yourself successful if you always live in fear, anger, sadness, guilty, or feeling duty-bound to someone/something?

The unhappiness of anyone is the doing of him/her to himself/herself, because only he/she has access to his/her heart. It is not the obligation of anyone else to make him/her happy. Similarly, nobody is guilty if you don’t want to make yourself feel happy.