Line by Line - Verse 52, Lines 9-11

Let him keep his mouth open, and (spend his breath) in the promotion of his affairs, and all his life there will be no safety for him.
~ James Legge translation, from The Sacred Books of the East, 1891 ~

Open your mouth,
Always be busy,
And life is beyond hope.
~ Gia-fu Feng and Jane English translation, published by Vintage Books, 1989 ~

Open the mouth
Meddle in the affairs
Live without salvation all through life
~ Derek Lin translation, from Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths, 2006 ~

If you talk all the time,
always doing something,
your life will be hopeless.
~ Ron Hogan rendition, from Beatrice.com, 2004 ~

While these lines are addressed to each of us to a certain extent, they really come down hard on those among us who are self-promoters. Every other word out of their mouths is about them and no one else. When an individual spends so much time and energy telling you how wonderful they are, it leaves too little time and energy to BE wonderful!

It should go without saying that most self-promoters have very low self-esteem. They blather on about themselves as a mechanism to drown out the voices of self-doubt and/or self-loathing inside them.

To view the Index page for this series to see what you may have missed or would like to read again, go here.