My Life Has Limits, Yet What I Chase Has None

answered by Zhuangzi, "The Secret of Caring for Life"

기원전 4세기경

🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS

The Remains of the Day (1993)

dir. James Ivory · UK

A man who has spent his whole life upholding the perfect butler's dignity realizes, too late, that he suppressed even his own feelings for the sake of that dignity. Between the duty he upheld and the one love he let slip away, only regret remains.

THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS

Has a life spent faithful to duty, in the end, stolen freedom from myself?

THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL

吾生也有涯，而知也無涯，以有涯隨無涯，殆已。

📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER

My life has its limits, but the knowledge to pursue has none. To chase the limitless with what is limited is nothing but peril.

💡 TL;DR

Zhuangzi warned that chasing the limitless with a limited life is nothing but peril.

📝The Classic Answers

Zhuangzi warned that chasing the limitless with a limited life is nothing but peril. A man who spent his whole life pursuing the perfect butler's dignity folded away even his own feelings for the sake of duty. Chasing the limitless standard of perfection, he let the one chance at love within his finite life slip past. Looking back, what he protected was dignity, but what he may have lost was life itself. I ask myself again today whether the standard of perfection I am chasing protects me, or is quietly eating away at me.

— ONGO · Curator

🌱Apply It Today

If chasing perfection has made you postpone a feeling today, look at it once before postponing it any further.

📖 Classic Source: Zhuangzi, "The Secret of Caring for Life". 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.