Too much and too little

Zilu asked whether you should put something into practice immediately. Confucius said: your parents and elder brothers are still alive. How could you do it immediately?

Ran You asked the same question. Confucius said: yes, do it immediately.

A third student, Gongxi Hua, was listening and asked why the same question got opposite answers. Confucius said: Ran You holds back, so I push him forward. Zilu has twice the courage of most men, so I hold him back.

Then the famous judgement: overshooting and falling short fail the same way.

Most people live on one side of that line, permanently, and build an identity around the side they chose. The person who acts fast calls themselves decisive and calls the other person afraid. The person who waits calls themselves thoughtful and calls the other person reckless.

Confucius had no time for either identity. He looks at the specific person and the specific question, and pulls in the direction of the gap.

So the useful question is only ever this: for this particular thing, at this particular moment, am I the person who needs pushing or the person who needs holding.

Not "what kind of person am I". That's an identity question and it produces a lifetime of consistent errors. The other question produces a decision.

MOJOWAY's intake asks a coach three topics and two angles for a single client. Specificity, applied to one person at one moment, is where the middle path stops being a cliché.