The true character of a person is measured by what he does when he knows that no one is aware of it.
01
Last January, Ding Junhui was in the hot seat because of a move.
It started like this: In the quarterfinals of the snooker tournament held on the 18th, Ding Junhui played against Belgium’s Brecher.
When the match was in the 7th game, Ding Junhui was ready to tee off and suddenly got up after dribbling the ball several times and then walked to his seat.
The referee didn’t know what happened and was confused. Ding Junhui turned his head to him and said, “Foul (I fouled)! ” signaling that he had fouled.
After the TV replay, it was realized that during his dribbling, the club head slightly touched the white ball, but such a touch was so subtle that the white ball almost didn’t move at all.
From the umpire’s expression, we can see that he didn’t notice Ding’s foul at all, and the off-court Breacher was even less aware of it. Even if Ding Junhui didn’t say anything, there wouldn’t be any problem.
Because Ding Junhui took the initiative to admit the foul, the whole audience spontaneously applauded for him, and the applause lasted for nearly 20 seconds.
After the match, the official Twitter feed of FIDE topped the video with the text: “We love our sport, from Ding Junhui’s honesty. “Many people commented below: “Noble act, top man “, “Winning applause for himself and for his country. “
This incident is small, but I really feel Ding Junhui’s cultivation and character.
Ding Junhui contacted billiards at the age of 8, and won the third place in the Asian Invitational Tournament at the age of 13, and was called a “prodigy”. In 2014, Ding Junhui became the 11th world champion in the history of the World Billiards Federation, and in 2018, he was inducted into the Snooker Hall of Fame, becoming the first person in China.
Many people say that he has come this far because of his strength, but through the “active admission of foul play”, I think he has been able to go for so long because of his character.
02
Ding Junhui’s behavior reminds me of an article written by American novelist Lefebvre Lefebvre – “The Fishing Revelation”.
The article is very simple, about the 11-year-old boy James and his father went fishing together at the lake.
He casts his rod again and again, but with no luck. After a long time, the boy finally caught a fish, and it was a big bass.
He was excited and ready to put the fish in the reel when his father, sitting on the sidelines, looked at the fish and then at his watch, then instructed James to put the bass back into the lake.
James was puzzled: “I caught this fish so hard, why should I put it back? ” His father told him, “It’s 10:00 p.m., two hours before the bass fishing is open. “
James looked around; there was not a single angler or boat in the moonlight. He pleaded with his father, “No one will know, just let me take the bass home. “But his father shook his head and insisted that his son release the bass back into the lake.
Thirty-four years later, James has become a famous architect, and in his life, he has encountered countless moral decisions, and whenever he does, he always remembers the experience of fishing with his father that night, and then reminds himself not to easily cross that “line” inside.
The article concludes by saying that morality is a simple matter of right and wrong, but it is very difficult to practice. If people are taught from a young age to be as strict as putting the big bass they catch back into the lake, they will gain the courage and strength to practice morality.
03
Why do I say these two things? Because in life, people like Ding Junhui and James’ father are rare.
People have a nature: the more private the environment, the more real people are; the lower the cost of making mistakes, the more likely people are to make mistakes. But many moments in life, supervising our every move, only our own conscience.
For example, a few days ago, Shandong Zibo two men and two women, in order to catch a few more dolls, taking advantage of the late night no one noticed, secretly destroyed the entire crane machine; Another example is a girl in Shaanxi Sanyuan, see the acupuncture store in front of the tethered kitten, while no one around, unauthorized to carry the cat away ……
Some people may say: “These things are too common, no big deal. I am reminded of the “flower incident” that was screened some time ago The “Flower Chief incident”.
Mr. Hua is always a person who takes the hotel as his home. Once, he happened to find that the waiter actually wiped the cup with a bath towel.
This discovery aroused his curiosity, so he began a surreptitious filming, every time he stayed in a five-star hotel in those days, he put a camera in the bathroom, secretly recording the waiter cleaning the room, the results found –
The waiter soaked the cup with shampoo, wiped the cup with a dirty bath towel, and cleaned the cup with a sponge that had wiped the toilet ……
In the past few years, the total number of five-star hotels in which Hua stayed is dozens, the price of these hotels a night is not less than 5,000 yuan, he took the hotel as his home, but how could not imagine that home would treat him this way.
And more I feel terrible things, even five-star hotels are still so, that the general star hotels, fast hotels, small hotels, naturally more unpleasant.
This seems to have become a common problem, the more the rules ignore the place, in the place where the human eye can not see, the more the ugliness of human nature is manifested in the most. This is true for individuals and also for companies.
04
Unlike the five-star hotels in China, in some foreign countries, I have seen the beauty of human nature and morality in details.
Lin Da, a Chinese American, has written a book called “Sorrow in the Depths of History”, which tells a real America: America is both the freest country in the world and the least free country in the world.
Once, Lynda accompanied a group of Chinese friends to visit the Grand Canyon in Yellowstone Park in the United States. When the friend saw no one paying attention, he picked up a Coke can and tried to throw it into the Grand Canyon: “Such a deep canyon, what a pity not to do something! “Linda was startled, rushed to stop:” This is illegal. “
No coincidence, the writer Liang Xiaosheng also told a story. At an intersection in Germany at night, an old woman was quietly waiting for the green light, and at this time there is no car passing. The person sitting next to her asked, “Since there are no cars on the road and no one sees them, why do you have to wait for the light to change? “
The old lady pointed to a building in the distance and said, “It’s not a matter of safety. Have you ever thought that behind a window in that building, say there may not be a child is watching here. I can’t have a child feeling that the rules can be changed and broken at will, that life can be flouted at will. “
I wonder if the five-star hotels in China will blush when they see this story?
Rousseau said: “Man, born free, yet always in chains, we all want to be free, but our lives are everywhere in chains, and we can not leave the chains. “
The prerequisite for freedom is restraint, and true cultivation is that when no one notices and no one is restrained, they still restrain themselves and adhere to social rules and inner moral principles; in the case of being able to do all kinds of bad things possible, they still do good things.
05
It was once said that a university is the morality of a nation, and to see how the quality of a nation is sometimes known by the way colleges and universities treat a book.
One late night in 1764, a fire destroyed the library of Harvard University, and many valuable books were destroyed.
The next day, the school learned of the major accident, and one student in particular was stone-faced; the sudden fire had put this ordinary student in a special position, forcing him to make a choice.
It turns out that before this happened, he had violated library rules by quietly taking a book donated by a priest out of the library, ready to read it with impunity and then return it.
Suddenly, this book became the only rare copy of the 250 books that Harvard had been given. What to do? Should I take it for myself unnoticed, or should I admit my mistake openly and honestly?
After a fierce struggle, the student knocked on the door of the president’s office, explained the reason, and solemnly returned the book to the school.
The president of Harvard first thanked the student for the book and rewarded him for returning it, but then pointed out that he had violated the school’s rules by smuggling the book and expelled him from the school.
Why did he have to do this? Because Harvard’s philosophy is that it is safer and more effective to have Harvard guarded by school rules and discipline than by anything else.
To put it bluntly, Harvard does not believe that people can still abide by morality in places where the rules cannot be monitored or seen by the human eye, so Harvard believes in rules more than anything else.
Harvard’s philosophy reminds me of Nietzsche’s “test of virtue” in “The Other Side of Good and Evil”.
Give yourself some tests. Live with integrity where no one can see you, and act with decorum even when you are alone. Only when you do this can you become a truly noble being.
06
In order to become a noble being, one must not only be ashamed of heaven and earth and of others, but more importantly, one must be ashamed of one’s own heart. This is not an easy task, in this regard, the person I admire most is Mei Yiqi.
Taiwan in 1962, the cold rain. Mei Yiqi, the old president of Tsinghua, was lying in a hospital bed, he could not speak. His wife, Han Yonghua, was with him, and the students came, everyone was silent, the atmosphere was very depressing, only a handbag on the table stood out.
Mei Yiqi died, we decided to open the handbag, and so open a look, all dumbfounded: inside all the accounts of the Tsinghua Fund, a pen, rules and regulations, no difference.
Tsinghua Fund is the United States returned part of the Gengzi reparations, a huge amount, by the Tsinghua each president to hold. Since Mei Yiqi served as president of Tsinghua in 1931, where he went, Tsinghua Fund followed.
Anti-Japanese War, Mei Yiqi family in the Southwest United University, too poor to drink vegetable soup, Mrs. Mei braved the cold rain to sell rice cakes, even so, Mei Yiqi did not move a Tsinghua fund;.
To the United States, Mei Yiqi and his wife live in a small house without even a separate bedroom, his wife was so poor that she went to the hotel to brush dishes. He felt sorry for his wife, choked up and said to her: “Wing Wah, I’m sorry for you. Even so, he did not touch a single cent of the Tsinghua Fund.
In his later years, he was sick and hospitalized in Taiwan and could not afford to pay for the medical expenses, and under such circumstances, he still did not touch the Tsinghua Fund.
He held a huge amount of funds in his hands throughout his life, but he was always clean, even without anyone’s supervision, and never did anything wrong to his conscience. What is the meaning of “gentleman prudent”? President Mei is a gentleman’s prudence and independence.
In the Book of Rites, it says: “A gentleman is prudent and does not deceive the dark room. But few of them really do it. Because when you are alone, there are no eyes watching you, no morals judging you, no one knows everything you do, and this is the time when one’s original face is revealed.
When I think of Principal Mei, I am reminded of the words of Lu Jiuyuan of the Southern Song Dynasty: “To be prudent and alone means not to deceive oneself. “When one is discreet, one is facing oneself, one is meeting with one’s own heart bare-breasted. Those who can be discreet are those who have overcome themselves, those who have truly lived as human beings.
07
In the past few years, we have seen one social celebrity after another on the road of “turning over” and never return.
If the most powerful person whose persona collapsed in 2018 is Liu Qiangdong, then the most powerful persona collapse in 2019 is undoubtedly Wu Xiubo.
In the past, he was “elegant uncle”, “temperament warm man” under the flash, who knows where the flash does not shine, his private life is chaotic, can no longer take off the “scum” label.
The more things that collapse, the more I remembered a quote from Montesquieu: “To measure a man’s true character is to see what he does when he knows that no one is aware of it. “
All of this is just to tell you that
Virtue is not only reflected in front of people, but also in the back of people, every detail is a sculpture of virtue. And a society’s civilization, in fact, lies in the society of each person to adhere to the inner principles.
For ordinary people, is not to run red lights when no one is supervising, not to steal chicken and dog, not to deceive, not to disobey; for the star bigwigs, is not to break the moral bottom line after the flash, not to be meticulous, not to indulge; for the enterprise, is not to cope with the back, not to mess up, dedicated to do a good job in every detail.
Only when these are done, a country can really have hope.
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