Bit by Bit - Chapter 1, Part 4

Trey Smith

The cicada and the little dove laugh at this, saying, "When we make an effort and fly up, we can get as far as the elm or the sapanwood tree, but sometimes we don't make it and just fall down on the ground. Now how is anyone going to go ninety thousand li to the south!"

If you go off to the green woods nearby, you can take along food for three meals and come back with your stomach as full as ever. If you are going a hundred li, you must grind your grain the night before; and if you are going a thousand li, you must start getting the provisions together three months in advance. What do these two creatures understand? Little understanding cannot come up to great understanding; the shortlived cannot come up to the long-lived.
~ Burton Watson translation ~

This is one of the great dangers of judging things: We often don't understand all the variables involved! We tend to look at life through our own perspective and act like it is the only perspective that matters.

The cicada and dove don't understand the perspective of immensity and so, not surprisingly, they are unable to put themselves "in the shoes" of the P'eng to view life from INSIDE that perspective.

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