The small room

Liu Yuxi wrote a jingle about his own small room, and it got onto a wall somewhere and became one of the most memorised pieces of Chinese prose.

The mountains are not high, he says. The name is great, because immortals live in them. The water is not deep. It becomes a pool because dragons live there. This room of mine is humble, but the virtue in it makes it fragrant.

Then the details. Moss climbing the steps, the colour of the grass in the courtyard, a great deal of laughter, a great deal of learning. He plays the qin. He reads Buddhist scriptures and classics, if there are any. There are people who come to talk, and people who don't. He lists what the room does not have: no noisy music, no stacks of paperwork.

It ends with Confucius's comment on a tiny place where virtue was present.

What I find useful is that the essay isn't about poverty at all. It's about a man with the sense to spend his attention on the part of his life he actually controls. The room is not large. A lot happens in it.

I've been in the Bay Area and I've been in an apartment that was too small for a desk. The happiest arrangements weren't the largest ones. They were the ones where the person had adapted their life to the room instead of pretending the room would fix their life.

That is not permission to accept bad conditions. It's a warning about the opposite failure, which is spending your whole twenties optimising a room you'll leave.

MOJOWAY works with the room you have, not the one you would like, because the record has to survive your actual week.