Only in the Cold Do We Know the Pine

answered by Analects, Zi Han

기원전 5세기(공자 언행록)

🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS

Cinderella Man (2005)

dir. Ron Howard · USA

A breadwinner loses everything in the Depression and hits bottom. Does want strip away even a person's dignity, or, like a pine in the cold, reveal his true grain instead?

THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS

At the bottom, having lost everything, what is the last thing a person must keep?

THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL

歲寒然後知松柏之後彫也

📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER

Only when the year turns cold do we know that the pine and cypress are the last to wither.

💡 TL;DR

Confucius said only when winter comes do we know the green of pine and cypress.

📝The Classic Answers

Confucius said only when winter comes do we know the green of pine and cypress. In good times anyone looks upright, but a person's true grain shows after everything has collapsed. What must be kept at the bottom is not wealth or honor but dignity and faithfulness toward oneself and one's family. As the cold cannot kill the pine, want only reveals a person's roots; it cannot topple them. I weigh what green of mine I would keep to the end even in ruin.

— ONGO · Curator

🌱Apply It Today

If times are hard today, write down one 'green' of your own you would keep to the end even in collapse.

📖 Classic Source: Analects, Zi Han. Ancient text in the public domain; rendered and interpreted independently by ONGO.
The film is honored as an equal questioner; its plot is rendered only as a universal dilemma. The classic source is an ancient text (Public Domain), and the reflection is 100% original ONGO content.