November 13, 2025 The origin of the admonition, “A small good is like a great evil, while a great good may appear merciless,” is from the Chinese classic The Caigentan  (aka, The Unencumbered Spirit: Reflections of a Chinese Sage ), but I first heard this from Dr. Kazuo Inamori, who was the founder and honorary chairman of Kyocera. The idea is that what we don’t want to hear is often what we need for personal growth, while what appears to be kindness can lead to self-indulgen

October 24, 2025 When someone is said to be acting with courage, we feel a sense of bravery or heroism. However, it seems to me that our understanding of the meaning is often ambiguous. As a child, for example, I confused feats of daring, like jumping off the second-story landing or grabbing a snake with my bare hands, with “courage.” Now I have come to realize, with the benefit of age, that these were acts of foolhardiness, quite different from true courage. What is the diff

September 30, 2025 I’m embarrassed to say that, up until I reached high school, I was not the kind of person who worked hard at things. I...