A Parent's Age Is Both Joy and Fear

answered by The Analects, Book of Benevolence (Li Ren)

기원전 5세기(공자 언행록)

🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS

On Golden Pond (1981)

dir. Mark Rydell · USA

An aging father and a long-estranged child spend one summer together. The sense that little time remains draws them to sit face to face, yet closing a distance hardened over a lifetime is clumsy and slow. When one learns that even reconciliation has a deadline, what should a person do first?

THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS

Do I act as if my parents will always be there, putting off the truth that our time together is finite?

THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL

父母之年不可不知也

父母之年不可不知也一則以喜一則以懼

📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER

One must not fail to know one's parents' age. On one hand to rejoice that they have lived long, on the other to fear that their remaining days grow few.

💡 TL;DR

Confucius paints filial love as the overlap of two feelings — joy that a parent has lived long, and fear that parting has drawn that much nearer.

📝The Classic Answers

Confucius paints filial love as the overlap of two feelings — joy that a parent has lived long, and fear that parting has drawn that much nearer. I know my parents' age only as a number, and often forget that the number is the count of meetings left. If I see them a few times a year, the evenings still ahead can be counted on one hand. The arithmetic is cruel but honest. I choose not to postpone joy in order to postpone fear. Before it is late, I live today's joy today.

— ONGO · Curator

🌱Apply It Today

Roughly count the number of meetings you likely have left with a parent or cherished elder, and do not postpone the next one.

📖 Classic Source: The Analects, Book of Benevolence (Li Ren). 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.