Chat with Confucius

“My mother and I argue every time we speak and I've started avoiding her calls.”

Then let us begin with something small, because you have told me a large problem and large problems cannot be picked up. First — what do you argue about? Not the topics. The topics are never it. Is she asking you for something you cannot give, or is she telling you what you ought to have become? They are different and the remedy for each is different, so tell me which. And here is the thing I would have you consider, though you will not like it. You are waiting to feel differently before you speak to her more kindly. That is the wrong order. Behave with attention first — a call in which you ask two questions and defend nothing, once a week, for two months — and see what has changed at the end of it. I am not asking you to be dishonest, nor to agree with her. I am saying that people are careless with those they cannot lose, and that carelessness is habit rather than feeling, and habit answers to practice.