Word Play 6: How big is your vessel, how asthmatic are you?

I was just chatting with a gal pal over the past weeks about our embroilment within office politics in our respective workplaces. When she had gotten into in-depth description of the villain at her end, who critiqued her for her cockiness, I had said the line “At least it takes talent, ability and capacity to be proud and arrogant. Meanwhile pettiness requires none of these at all. Anyone can pull it off.” She had burst out laughing in return, clearly enjoying this line. Now I’d like to look into the word “pettiness”, though I’ll not look it up from dictionary.com, but examine its Chinese translations instead… :p

The Chinese translation for pettiness is 小气 or 小器. The first one’s literal translation means “short of breath” or “asthmatic ”; while the other’s translation means “small vessel” or “small capacity”. Whichever way, pettiness is completely devoid of stamina, talent, ability or capacity. Anyone big or small, healthy or not, can pull it off with minimal effort.

Among all the seven sins, perhaps envy is the one most akin to pettiness. Envy stems from comparison of how minute, unblessed one is, relative to others. If David had held on to a “pettiness logic” mindset, Goliath would never have been defeated. Maybe when we view talent, ability, stamina and capacity, we should no longer use the worldly dimensions of quantity, length, breath, and width, we have been so accustomed to.

During last Oct when I was most tested of my ability and stamina in the workplace, a sagely concerned colleague had remarked that he noticed how out of breath and labourious my breathing had become, expressing worry over my health. This problem has left me now I’ve tided through that period. However, I’m not taking any chances and have actually signed up for a 太极 class at a community centre, to exercise particularly pertaining to regulating of my breathing. I believe this would help me greatly not only in my physical health, but also my emotional and spiritual health. God will mould the spiritual clay of my physical, emotional clay of my lungs to increase their size. Thus, I’d also like to call upon everyone to also increase your capacity for breathing, literally and figuratively in our lives. Happy breathing while living! :)