In preparation for class this week, I found reading through the excerpts from Analects of Confucius to be very interesting, and I thought referencing the translation by A. Charles Muller to be especially helpful in making sense of some of these teachings. The concept of ren, in terms of Confucian thought, was something I was not very familiar with prior to reading this translation, and I never knew it was such a central concept to this particular school of thought. I thought it was interesting that even though it has been translated into English as “benevolence,” “altruism,” “goodness”, “humaneness,” it does not necessarily refer to a specific virtue but rather, humans’ ability to do good, and the fact that this is a sort of obligation that human beings have. In some ways, it reminded me of the idea of Dao, as it was not really able to be told or described. I also enjoyed learning about the process of manifesting one’s ren through self-reflection and various human relationships. One particular excerpt that stood out to me was [1:8], in which The Master said: “If the noble man lacks gravitas, then he will not inspire awe in others. If you study, you will not be stubborn. Take loyalty and good faith to be of primary importance, and have no friends who are not of equal (moral) caliber. When you make a mistake, don’t hesitate to correct it.” When thinking about our American society today, there seems to be an increasing emphasis on perfectionism and oftentimes our society promotes the idea that failure denotes inferiority. Social media especially perpetuates this idea of perfectionism and we feel that if we don’t measure up to the people we see online, we are somehow less than. However, this teaching states that everyone makes mistakes, however, the important thing is to rise above these errors, correct them for the future, and not let our mistakes define us.