Let deeds, not words, be your adorning…
‘Anything that we have to learn to do we learn by the actual doing of it…We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate ones, brave by doing brave ones.’
(Aristotle, Niconachean Ethics, Book II, p.91).
“So the little prince, in spite of all the good will that was inseparable from his love, had soon come to doubt her. He had taken seriously words which were without importance, and it made him very unhappy. “I ought not to have listened to her,” he confided to me one day. “One never ought to listen to the flowers. One should simply look at them and breathe their fragrance. Mine perfumed all my planet. But I did not know how to take pleasure in all her grace. This tale of claws, which disturbed me so much, should only have filled my heart with tenderness and pity.” And he continued his confidences: “The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything! I ought to have judged by deeds and not by words. She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her…I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her…” (1)Flower Talk
Words fool us and seduce us. And this is not just a problem with other people’s words, we also seduce and frighten our selves with words. We promise ourselves that we will become the things we admire…in the hope that the promise, the intention, the hope, the aspiration will suffice…
Words are important because they can be symbols of actions. However, in order for them to be solid and not hollow they have to have substance outside themselves – that’s the nature of a symbol.
All we can rely on, whether its regarding ourselves or others, is action.
Deeds.
It’s all we have.
Let deeds, not words, be your adorning. (2)
