Endurance

Tâm flung the stack of papers in the director's face, grabbed her handbag and walked out, treating it as quitting the job for good. Don't think that being the boss lets you say whatever harsh thing you like to anyone. Everyone is a human being with honour and self-respect, and you can't just insult people whenever you please. If I don't work here I'll find work somewhere else, I won't die of it. Arrogant, uncultured brute. More or less like that, she cursed silently all the way home, then went into her room, shut the door and lay down without answering her mother's calls.
A little later a message came from Hồng, her colleague, inviting her out for a drink and a film. That would cheer her up a little. She picked up her bag and slipped out quietly without letting her mother and father know. Hồng, smiling, gave Tâm a ride on her motorbike around the city and then to a cinema to see a spy film. Afterwards they looked for a noodle shop to eat, since they were hungry.
Tâm asked:

• Let me ask you something. How can you put up with that wretched director?
  Hồng smiled and replied:
• That fellow is a lot nicer than many others. I've met people far scarier than him, and I'm fine.
• Don't you take offence?
• Why take offence? He's a boss, but he's also an employee. I'm an employee too. We all work to live, so clashes are normal.
  Tâm looked at Hồng in surprise and asked:
• How can you be so cool? Don't you feel upset when he insults you?
• I'd be stupid to be upset or take offence. Those feelings harm me, they don't feed me.
• But isn't honour worth more than money?
• Honour is worth something only when it's put in the right place. For example, I'd feel ashamed if someone threw rubbish in front of tourists and damaged the nation's honour, or if a street robber attacked a Western woman who felt very warmly towards Vietnam. The honour of the homeland is what matters; personal honour is just cheap sentiment.
  Tâm asked in surprise:
• Where did you get such a mature philosophy of life?
• When I was little I was often scolded by my parents, and even made to lie down and be beaten on the bottom with a rod in front of guests. When your parents hit you, you can't be angry. It hurts but you can't be angry, so my mind learned self-restraint and to endure everything. When I grew up and remembered the beatings, I was grateful to my parents. Their beatings were an extremely precious lesson. Later, when life knocked me down, I knew how to keep my mind calm because of that. Once the mind is calm, you understand many things.
• My parents never hit me, they respect me very much, they don't even speak harshly to me when there are guests. I was proud to live in such a cultured family. Today, hearing you say this, my whole view has been turned upside down.
  Hồng smiled and said:
• That's because you haven't watched war films or army films. In training camps they drill recruits terribly, drilling out all the upset and touchiness. Only when you've lost the upset and touchiness can you fight a war. Many soldiers come back from the fighting depressed, and some even take their own lives, because they were born into a family where parents respected them like yours. But a soldier who grew up in a strict family, with parents who scolded and beat him, comes back from a hard fight perfectly calm, as if nothing had happened.
  Hồng remembered that as a child she had been slapped across the face by a teacher in front of the whole class just for having forgotten her exercise book. To this day she still feels affection for that teacher and no anger at all.
  Tâm was silent for a long time. Hồng spoke again:
• Tomorrow, go back to the office.
• I threw the papers in his face. How can I go back to work?
• Then tomorrow go and apologise, that's all. Or message him an apology now, and apologise again in person tomorrow.
• That's hard.
• You have to get through this to grow up. Don't be childish any more 🦖🦖

This life is not short of adversity. Some adversities are financial, or of health, or accidents, but there are also adversities of honour, reputation, status, public opinion, feelings... If our soul is fragile and easily broken, those adversities will drown us. We must have enough inner strength, enough courage and enough philosophy to pass through the many adversities of life.

That endurance must first of all come from family education. The more parents love their children, the stricter they must be in teaching them. Never beat a child out of anger, because that is a defect of ethics; beat a child only to train their endurance so that they can step into life more firmly later. Nowadays, in what we consider to be a civilised age, we shield children too carefully, and without realising it we make them weak and put them at a disadvantage.

There are things that must wait until one is older, such as alcohol, tobacco and sex, because if one comes to them too early, the body cannot bear it and collapses at once. But there are things that should be started as early as possible, such as learning music, learning foreign languages, practising flexibility and, above all, practising enduring reproach and punishment by the rod without resentment or touchiness.
To make a child able to feel pain without resentment, only reproach and punishment from parents can create that frame of mind. Then, when they grow up and have enough understanding, they can endure insults from strangers outside without resentment or touchiness.

Adversities of accidents, illness and even money, odd as it may seem, are easier to bear than adversities of honour and reputation. We must teach our children and grandchildren enough endurance for every adversity, so that they have the strength to step into a life full of hardships and setbacks in the future.