With Nurture It Grows; Without It, It Withers

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Of the trees of Ox Mountain, Mencius said that with the right nurture nothing fails to grow, and without it nothing fails to wither. A person's inborn talent and good ground are like this too: nurtured, they grow; pressed down, they wilt. When one with a rare gift is crushed beneath a will that binds them like a possession, that gift, far from growing, collapses. Yet as the trees of Ox Mountain keep their roots even when hewn to the stump, an inborn ground is never wholly gone. Given nurture and care again, the sound within it revives. To follow one's own talent beyond an imposed yoke is not presumption but the tending of a ground that had begun to wither. I look back at whether I am pressing down someone's gift as a yoke, or giving it the place to be nurtured.