The second step: Concentrate on what you have to do. Fix
your eyes on it. Remind yourself that your task is to be a
good human being; remind yourself what nature demands of
people. Then do it, without hesitation, and speak the truth as
you see it. But with kindness. With humility. Without
hypocrisy.
- Nature’s job: to shift things elsewhere, to transform them,
to pick them up and move them here and there. Constant
alteration. But not to worry: there’s nothing new here.
Everything is familiar. Even the proportions are unchanged. - Nature of any kind thrives on forward progress. And
progress for a rational mind means not accepting falsehood
or uncertainty in its perceptions, making unselfish actions its
only aim, seeking and shunning only the things it has control
over, embracing what nature demands of it—the nature in
which it participates, as the leaf’s nature does in the tree’s.
Except that the nature shared by the leaf is without
consciousness or reason, and subject to impediments.
Whereas that shared by human beings is without
impediments, and rational, and just, since it allots to each
and every thing an equal and proportionate share of time,
being, purpose, action, chance. Examine it closely. Not
whether they’re identical point by point, but in the aggregate:
this weighed against that. - No time for reading. For controlling your arrogance, yes.