Mencius

My Google-sleuthing has found this quote my mother mentioned. Trying to search for it in English produced no results, but I heard her say the first five words in Cantonese to my younger sister. So I made my guesses as to how to pinyin-ify four of those words into Mandarin, but really I only knew what two of the words were, and along with using quotation marks to search for phrases, I found what I was looking for.

天將降大任於斯人也，必先苦其心志，勞其筋骨，餓其體膚，空乏其身，行拂亂其所為，所以動心忍性，增益其所不能。

Google-searching only produced this much pin-yin of the quote:

tian jiang jiang da ren yu si ren ye, bi xian ku qi xin zhi, lao qi jin gu, e qi ti fu, ? ? ? ?, xing fu luan qi suo wei, ? ? ? ? ? ?, ? ? ? ? ? ?.

My lack of Chinese reading skills thinks that the last part says "suo yi something xin something something, something something qi suo bu neng." However, that's just reading pronunciation without meaning. Help!

Okay, here are various English translations, but the Chinese-ness seems to be lost in the translation. I'd actually prefer to know a more literal translation.

"Thus, when Heaven is about to confer a great office on any man, it first exercises his mind with suffering, and his sinews and bones with toil. It exposes his body to hunger, and subjects him to extreme poverty. It confounds his undertakings. By all these methods it stimulates his minds, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompentencies." (Translated by James Legge in The Works of Mencius)

"So it is that whenever Heaven invests a person with great responsibilities, it first tries his resolve, exhausts his muscles and bones, starves his body, leaves him destitute, and confounds his every endeavor. In this way his patience and endurance are developed, and his weakness are overcome." (Translated by David Hinton in Mencius)

Writers with Lyme Disease

Every time I start or stop taking a drug, my mom immediately notices something and says that I look a little better. This is without her knowing what drug regimen changes I'm doing. Well, it does seem like my brain connections are doing a little better the last few days. Of course, I wonder what taking a drug for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder does to you if you don't have either. It would sort of make sense that when withdrawing from the drug, one might develop some of those characteristics.

Here are three authors who have Lyme disease to varying degrees. It's nice that as famous writers, they can do a better job of publicizing their experiences. At the same time, what male doctor is going to believe what a female writer talks about? Since, all women are crazy and illogical, and especially women writers, they're all depressed and even more illogical.

Note, vile old infectious disease specialist in Los Gatos, whose medical history taking included the question, "Have you heard of Amy Tan?", and lots of smirking and snarfing when he asked more irrelevant questions like where I went to college, what major, where did my siblings go to college, etc. Stanford. Smirk. Harvard. Snort. Yep, that's the reason I'm sick, because my sister went to Harvard, and we're a crazy Asian-American family. Maybe we should feel sorry that the old guy is so unhappy.

Amy Tan

Meg Cabot

Rebecca Wells

There are similarities that are so unusual. Ms. Wells says in her FAQ that she was only able to write for twenty minutes and always at night. Sounds like my blogging....

It does seem like one thing people are still able to do while having Lyme disease is write. Although I do remember reading one or two of Amy Tan's novels several years ago and wondering if she was on crack.

The Gift of the Sea

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity -- in freedom in the sense that dancers are free barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern. The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation but in living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands; one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits ... islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh
from The Gift of the Sea

Poems

So I steal (repost) poems from the blog of a gifted writer that I read. I like these because the language is accessible to people who don't usually read or appreciate poetry, yet still beautiful, and the ideas are very real.

After a While

"After a While" by Veronica A. Shoffstall

After a while you learn
The subtle difference between
Holding a hand and chaining a soul
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
And company doesn't always mean security.

And you begin to learn
That kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes ahead
With the grace of a woman
Not the grief of a child

And you learn
To build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow's ground is
Too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way
Of falling down in mid flight

After a while you learn
That even sunshine burns if you get too much
So you plant your own garden
And decorate your own soul
Instead of waiting
For someone to bring you flowers

And you learn
That you really can endure
That you are really strong
And you really do have worth
And you learn and you learn
With every good bye you learn.

Historian Iris Chang won many battles
The war she lost raged within