1There are two hands in every matter. The Near Hand is mine: what I judge, what I choose, how hard I try. The Far Hand is not mine: the weather, the luck, the past, the Last Door, and whatever goes on in any head but my own. Nearly all my misery has come from hauling with my whole strength at the Far Hand while the Near Hand hung slack at my side.
2Before you grieve over a thing, or rage at it, or lie awake with it, ask one short question: is this mine to move?
3The sower chooses the seed. She ploughs straight, sows in season and keeps the birds off. That is the whole of her part. She does not own the rain. If I must weigh myself, let me weigh the sowing. The harvest was grown by the sky and me together, and the sky did not ask my leave.
4What another person thinks of me is inside that person. I cannot reach in. I can only be the thing they ought to think well of, and then leave their thinking to them.
5The past is a room with the door locked from the other side. I may look through the keyhole. I may learn from what I see. But I wear out my shoulder for nothing when I throw myself against that door. What I do about the past is in the Near Hand. The past is not.
6Worry is pulling at tomorrow with today's strength. Tomorrow does not move, and today goes without.
7Why does a Keeper care about this at all? Because strength is not endless. Each hour I spend straining at what cannot be moved is an hour taken from some door I could have opened. Waste is a quiet kind of Closing. The one who fumes at the flood builds no boat.
8Be honest about the border. Much that I call the Far Hand is the Near Hand and hard. "I cannot help my temper." "That is just how I am." "There was nothing I could do." Was there nothing? Or was there something, and it was heavy?
9Between the two hands lies a wide strip of ground where I can push but cannot make sure: my child's character, my friend's choice, my own health, the fate of my work. Here the rule is simple and hard. Push well. Push with all I have. Then open the hand. What the push becomes belongs to the Whole.
10Complaint is asking the rain to say it is sorry.
11A man can take my coat, my field and my good name. He cannot make me choose a mean thing. For that he needs my help.
12The freest person I ever met owned almost nothing, and that was not the reason. The reason was that he needed almost nothing from the Far Hand. Praise could come or stay away. Luck could come or stay away. He would do the same work in the same way. You could not find a handle on him to lead him by.
13I am praised for what luck did, and blamed for what luck did. Take neither home.
14The body is mostly in the Far Hand. I can feed it well, walk it, rest it. I cannot forbid it to age, and I cannot argue with a fever. Care for it as a good tenant cares for a house he did not build and will not keep.
15I may show someone a door. I may hold it open and say what I see through it. I cannot walk them through. And if I drag them, it is no longer their door.
16You struck your foot on a stone and cursed the stone. Think how that looked.
17The river is high. I cannot make it lower. But there is still a good deal in my hand: where to cross, when to cross, whether to wait a day, whether to build a raft, whether to go round by the bridge. The one who shouts at the water sees none of these. He sees a river and his own anger. A calm mind standing at a high river has five doors. An angry one has none.
18"If only" is the prayer of the Far Hand. Nobody answers it.
19This teaching must not make me cold. My child is sick. The fever is in the Far Hand; my care is not. So I do everything the Near Hand can do: the water, the cloth, the healer fetched in the night, the watching. I do it with my whole heart. What I may not do is add to the sickness a second sickness of my own, a frenzy that makes me useless at the bedside.
20Even in the worst hour, some part is mine. Find the part. It may be only how I breathe, or what I say to the one beside me. That is enough to work with. It is where I begin.
21I did not choose the house I was born in, or my face, or my mother's tongue, or the age of the world I arrived in. This is the clay I was handed. It is foolish to spend a life wishing for other clay while this clay dries.
22There is a kind of ruling that calls itself love. "I only want what is best for you," I say, and I reach into another's choosing and do the choosing for them. But their Near Hand is theirs. To take it is a theft, even when I take it gently, even when I would have chosen well. A person who is never allowed to choose is a person with no ways at all. I have only hidden the Closing inside a kindness.
23You sent the letter. Now you walk up and down waiting for the answer. The walking does not speed the rider. Go and do something useful, and let the answer find you at work.
24When the pot leaves the wheel it leaves the potter. It may be sold or broken, prized or used to feed hens. Make it well, set it on the shelf, and turn back to the wheel.
25Atar does not hear requests. Good. Then I need spend no breath asking the Far Hand for favours, and I can spend all of it on the Near.
26The small trials of each day are the training ground. The cart stuck in the mud. The meal burnt. The friend an hour late. If I cannot keep the two hands apart in these, how will I do it when the news is truly bad?
27When someone wrongs me, the wrong came out of their Near Hand. It is theirs to answer for and theirs to mend. My reply comes out of mine. I am not to blame for the first, and I cannot blame them for the second.
28Good luck is weather too. Enjoy the fair day. Do not build the house as if every day will be fair.
29Peace does not come from having arranged the world to suit me. I tried that for many years. The world would not hold still. Peace comes from knowing, in each matter, which hand it lies in.
30Suppose nothing in the Far Hand ever changed in my favour again. No more luck, no more praise, no kinder weather. Could I still live well? Yes. Finding that out is the whole discovery. Everything after it is practice.
31The healer did all that could be done, and the patient died. She weeps, and she should weep. But she must not write "my fault" where the truth is "my limit." To blame herself for the Far Hand is a kind of pride. It claims a power she never had. And it will make her afraid to take the next patient, who needs her.
32Push the door. Do not push the wall.
33There are two ways to get this wrong. One man believes everything is in his Near Hand. He tries to command the sea, his wife and next year, and he ends a tyrant first and a wreck after. The other believes nothing is. He lets go of the oars and calls it wisdom, and ends up wherever leaves end up. The Keeper rows hard and does not argue with the tide.
34The flinch is not mine. When the dog lunges, the body jumps before I am asked. When the insult lands, the face goes hot. No shame in that. What I do in the next breath is mine. Watch that breath. It is the narrow gate the whole of a life passes through.
35The sky is in the Far Hand. The coat is in the Near.
36Whatever I cannot be content without has a rope on me. And whoever holds that thing holds the other end of the rope. If I must have the great man's favour, I am his. If I must have the crowd's cheer, I am theirs. Count your ropes. Then begin, one at a time, to need less.
37As I grow old the Near Hand grows small. I cannot lift what I lifted. I cannot walk where I walked. But I notice the centre of it has not shrunk at all. How I judge, what I say yes to, how I treat whoever brings my soup: these are as much mine as they were at twenty. Perhaps more, now that there is less to distract me.
38The border between the hands can be moved, and learning is what moves it. To the one who cannot swim, the river is all Far Hand. To the swimmer, a good part of it is Near. Each skill I gain, each true thing I come to know, takes a strip of ground from the one hand and gives it to the other. This is why the Keepers call ignorance a closed door. This is why to teach is to open.
39Do not call a thing the Far Hand only because it is too heavy for one. No single person moves the boulder off the road. Twenty do it before noon. Many Near Hands joined reach where one cannot. Before I say "nothing can be done," I should ask whether I mean "nothing can be done by me alone."
40You spent the evening guessing what he meant by that look. You will never know, and it was only a look. An evening is gone that had a child in it, and a fire, and bread.
41At night I sort the day into two heaps. In the first go the things that were mine to move: did I move them, and well? In the second go the things that were not. The first heap I look at closely. The second I do not look at for long. I once did it the other way about, and I learned nothing and slept badly.
42If the field fails after honest sowing, there is loss, and no shame. If the field thrives after lazy sowing, there is bread, and no honour. Do not mix up these four.
43The Far Hand is not my enemy. It is only the rest of the Whole, doing what it does. And it has brought me every good thing I did not make myself: the sun, my mother, the words I think in, the bread that others learned to bake ten thousand years before I was hungry. I complain that the Far Hand takes. I forget that the Far Hand gave me everything that could be taken.
44Row as if there were no tide. Then sleep as one who knows there is.
45What is the use of this teaching to the one in chains? I have asked myself, for I have never worn them. I think it is this. The chain is on the leg, and the one who put it there did a great Closing, and should be fought. But there is a room the chain does not reach. If a person keeps that room in order, then on the day the chain breaks, somebody whole walks out.
46I will never be finished learning which hand is which. This morning I got it wrong before I had eaten. But each time I catch myself straining at the wall, and turn, and find the door, I am a little quicker. That quickness is all that wisdom has ever been.