Daily Advice 1.15.21

[readoldthings]

Hi Everyone,

I'm out of town and won't be able to respond to comments for a couple of days. Let's have an extra post for 1.15.

Sun Tzu concludes Chapter 1:

Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.

This point seems critical to our ongoing conversation.

We've been discussing acting from the will, not the passions. Something that I only recently realized is that the word "passion" bears the same relationship to "passive" that "action" does to "active." If you are acting from your passions-- rage and fear in particular, in this case-- you aren't really acting at all. You're being acted upon!