The pig and the promise

Zengzi's wife was going to market, and her young son was crying and would not let her go.

She said: don't cry. When I get back, I'll kill a pig for you.

She came home and Zengzi was sharpening the knife to kill the pig. She said: it was a joke, I only said it to keep him quiet.

Zengzi said: you don't lie to a child. Children have no judgement. They learn everything from their parents, and they do what their parents do. If you lie to him now, you're teaching him that lying is how you get what you want. A mother who deceives her own son can't expect him to trust her again.

He killed the pig.

The story is used in China as a lesson about honesty. That's obviously right and it's the least interesting layer.

The interesting part is that the wife's lie cost nothing. It was a moment's convenience, and nobody would have caught her. Zengzi's point is that she wouldn't have thought of it as a lie at all, because it wasn't said to anybody who mattered.

Look at the small sentences you say to people who can't hold you to them. A client who will never follow up. A junior colleague who won't check. A child who will believe it. Yourself, on a Sunday evening, about what you'll do on Monday.

The promise you break to the person least likely to notice is the one that tells you what you are.

MOJOWAY's weekly check-in records what you said you would do, and then simply shows you what happened. That comparison, without judgment, is where self-knowledge gets concrete.