The man who trusted his measurement

A man in Zheng wanted to buy shoes. He measured his foot, wrote the measurement on a strip of bamboo, and put it on his seat.

When he got to the market he discovered he'd left it at home. So he went back for it. By the time he returned, the market had closed and he had no shoes.

Someone asked him: why didn't you just try the shoes on with your foot?

He said: I trust the measurement. I don't trust my foot.

This is the funniest and most accurate sentence in the whole of Chinese philosophy, and everyone quotes it while doing the same thing.

You have a number that represents you. Income, weight, followers, years of experience, the age you were supposed to have done something by. And then there's the actual foot: whether your body works on a Tuesday, whether the work you're doing is any good, whether the life fits.

When they disagree, most people try to change the foot.

The measurement is a convenience. It was invented because the foot is hard to describe. It has no authority beyond that.

This week, take one number you've been managing and instead put the actual thing on. Go for the walk instead of counting steps. Write the sentence instead of checking the word count. Talk to the person instead of scoring the relationship.

MOJOWAY works with what's actually happening in a person's life, in their words. Measurement is downstream of that, and self-knowledge requires the foot.