“The practice of benevolence is like the practice of archery. The archer adjusts himself and then shoots. If he misses, he does not murmur against those who excel himself, but seeks the cause in himself.”Mencius · Mencius · -300 · cartea 2, paragraful 7
Like an archer: take your stance before you shoot, and if you miss, look for the cause in yourself, not in others.
Mencius compares virtue to archery because both require a correct stance before the action. An archer who misses does not resent the one who beat him; he checks his own posture, breathing, and focus. The mechanism is reciprocal responsibility: morality is not a contest, and your failure is not caused by another's merit. A manager who loses a project and hunts for a culprit on the team, instead of examining his own decisions, breaks exactly this principle.
There is a subtle difference between owning your failure and blaming yourself excessively. Mencius's archer does not punish himself when he misses. He simply returns to the starting position, calm, and corrects what lies within his control. That is responsibility without drama: failure becomes information, not a verdict. Think of someone who fails an exam and, instead of saying "I'm stupid" or "the teacher is unfair," notes where her preparation was thin. Next time, the preparation looks different. The natural question is what exactly depends on us in this correction.
Why it matters Today, when the reflex is to blame someone outside ourselves, the image of the archer offers a model of maturity: set yourself right first, act, then own the outcome.