Do not, in order to do.

I adopted this maxim from Mengzi as the guiding principle when I started doing client work ages ago:

人有不為也，而後可以有為。

Only when a person will not do some things are they capable of doing great things.

After Mencius, Lí Lóu II (4B:8)

James Legge’s classic translation reads: “Men must be decided on what they will not do, and then they are able to act with vigour in what they ought to do.”

True greatness or excellence is yì (义) — righteousness, justice, and meaning. It emerges from accepting or enforcing appropriate limits.

As a Confucian of the Warring States period, Mencius was a rival philosopher to Taoist Zhuang Zhou, who is quoted in the image above — from an engraving in the wall along the core sample deep under Portland in the Robertson Tunnel. However, this is where I think those two schools of thought overlap or have a common root.

It’s the negation and not-doing that opens up the positive possible actions.