Laozi's wisdom is still useful today when we look for explanations and solutions for our problems

I learned this from my father when I was at elementary school age. Of course I wasn't able to understand either my father or Laozi. Now I am beginning to see the wisdom in these words.

"He who knows others has wisdom;

he who knows himself is wise;

he who can conquer others is powerful;

he who can conquer himself is strong;

he who is content with what he has is rich;

he who perseveres has great aspirations;

he who keeps his duty for long can last long;

he who, though dies physically, lives on spiritually, lives longest."

[This is my rough translation of Laozi's words]

According to this ancient Chinese philosopher, between the two tasks: knowing others and knowing oneself, conquering others and conquering oneself, the more difficult and important one is dealing with oneself: know ourselves and conquer ourselves.

For self-improvement, it is essential that we know where our strength and weakness are, what truly makes us happy and fulfilled and what we want from our lives, and that we are strong-willed enough to conquer our selfish impulses, delay gratifications, manage our time and priority, and focus on our goals. Failure to conquer oneself includes indulgence in unhealthy practice like over-drinking, over-eating, drug-taking, chain-smoking, laziness, too much sitting and TV-watching, etc.

I begin to appreciate Laozi's words after I have been through so much in life. I remember one colleague of mine who is good at pointing out faults in others. I looked at her, thinking you are not any better than anyone else. Later I realized that I am not any better than she is when I am faster at finding faults in her than in myself. What a shame!

I think Laozi's emphasis on self-knowledge and conquering demonstrates his understanding of human nature, back over 2000 years ago --- that it's easier to see the blemishes on other's face than on ours, that something in our nature perhaps makes us so critical of others, that when something happens, we most likely find blames in others, that we know fault-finding is detrimental to any relationship and we still do, that we know while we can't change others, the only thing we can do is to change ourselves, still we look elsewhere for the root of our problems and solutions.

Even today, as a country, it is easier to destroy others than to conquer the destructive desire in us. Perhaps that's why we had WWI, WWII and more.