The Golden Mean When HIT had 90th birthday celebration, I have passed 30 years of my life. The most impressive thing happened since I got to work. How to deal with the relationship, how to overcome difficulties and how to be a competent teacher, wife, daughter and daughter-in-law make me grow up. As the year goes by, the great differences took place on me. I learned a little bit about how to give and take. Having been through these, I started to pick up a little The Golden Mean put forward by Kongzi thousands of years ago. A sage once reduced all virtue to the golden mean. Push right to the extreme and it becomes wrong; press all the juice from an orange and it becomes bitter. Even in enjoyment never go to extremes. Keeping a balance is the key point in golden mean, avoiding extremes and radicalism. The principle of the “golden mean” of neither excessive nor insufficient provides a fundamental guidance in our daily actions and behaviors. It’s difficult in our life while we are thinking over something, talking about something, doing something. Sometimes, Probably our emotion gets extreme change, such as, to be extreme excitement, to be extreme angry, to be extreme dejection, ect. For example, Husband and wife are ready to quarrel for a trifling matter. Even someone fights for a trifling thing. The proposition of the views, “golden mean”, “middle and constancy”, and “middle and adherence”, makes the concept of “middle” the core of Confucianism. “Middle” is not only the subjective condition of a person, i.e., his internal , underplayed emotions , but also the standard and rule of his outward words and behaviors in the real life in the society . These two aspects are united. The internal “middle” is the prerequisite of “middle” in words and behaviors. The “middle” in words and behaviors is the externalization and display of the internal “middle”. Easy to say, difficult to do.So the spirit of the golden mean is hard to find out. Even till death I can’t seize, still working on all my life. |