58. Fortune and Misfortune

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Original Chinese text

English translation

When government is relaxed and unobtrusive, the people are honest and warmhearted; when government scrutinizes everything, the people become evasive and deficient.

Giving people reasonable space can foster trust and simplicity. Constant inspection and fault-finding instead teach people to protect themselves and work around the rules.

Original Chinese text

English translation

Misfortune is where good fortune finds support; good fortune is where misfortune lies hidden.

Fortune and misfortune are not fixed. Circumstances and human responses can turn one into the other, calling for caution in ease and steadiness in hardship.

Original Chinese text

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Who can know where these reversals will end?

Because fortune and misfortune lean upon each other, their transformations have no easily known endpoint. Immediate gain or loss is therefore a poor basis for final judgment.

Original Chinese text

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There is no fixed standard within them.

Continuing the previous thought, fortune and misfortune can reverse. What now seems settled or normal may not remain so.

Original Chinese text

English translation

What is normal may turn strange; what is good may turn harmful and distorted.

When conditions change or something is carried too far, what was once right and beneficial can reverse. Judgment must attend to context and measure.

Original Chinese text

English translation

People have been confused about this for a very long time.

People often treat present fortune and misfortune, or good and bad, as permanent absolutes, and so miss the complex process by which things change.

Original Chinese text

English translation

Therefore the sage is square without cutting, has edges without wounding, is upright without pressing others, and gives light without dazzling.

Firm character need not become harshness. Mature integrity keeps its principles and its measure, illuminating matters without overpowering other people.

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