Charles Bukowski

With respect to my last post, I am tempted to recollect Lao Tzu: [roughly] “what is a good man?  The teacher of a bad man.  Who is a bad man?  A good man’s charge.”

Put another way, the good person is something to teach, relative to someone else.  Put yet another way, the teacher is a sort of parent, to the person who is sort of a child.

If I follow this chain of symbolic logic, then the same relation should hold for me, in trying to “improve” the world.  There is no need for me to offer unsolicited advice, merely to make myself available as a resource, and my primary job is to work on myself.

“By their fruits shall you know them”, as Christ taught.

Or, as I think Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Everything good in the world starts small, I think, and remains slow for a long time.