“The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists.” Japanese Proverb

Transcript

Dan (00:10)

Hello everybody, welcome to the Teach Different podcast. We have a great quote today. It’s attributed to a Japanese proverb, although we’re not exactly sure that its exact words come from that origin, but it’s a really, really profound one on adaptability and strength. And we’re just great to be here again with everybody. Hopefully, you’ve been doing your conversations well and enjoying the experience. And Steve and I, we were talking about this. We’ve been at this for about five years now. In my timeline, more than five, five and a half actually. It was January of 2020, right before the pandemic when we started this podcast. And we have to be knocking at the door of at least 200 quotes in the–

 

Steve (00:47)

More than five years.

 

Dan (01:05)

in the podcast library. And we’ve never had a Japanese proverb, which is what we’re gonna look at today. For those unfamiliar, and if you’ve listened to this podcast, this is a good repetition for you. We have the quote and then we essentially look at the claim and the counterclaim of the quote. What does it mean? And then disagree with it, ask some questions organically. And this is all about the joy of critical thinking, of inquiry, of connection. The neuroscience supports this kind of activity. It’s good for our brains and our mental health to do this. So it’s just a…

 

Steve (01:49)

And let me do a quick advertisement for what we’re building right now, which is a set of modules. They’re going to be learning modules that you can actually go through online to learn how to do this method. You know, at your house, you can do it. You know, if you’re a teacher, you can do it and practice some of it and use it for your classrooms. And it’s just exciting to go through the process of doing that. And we’re going to be looking for some parents specifically to be willing to be guinea pigs with us and to maybe go through the modules. There’s going to be a cost to it. But of course, if you’re one of the groups that we get together that can practice this with us and help us pilot it, there won’t be any cost. And you’ll get to learn what we’re thinking about as far as how to really coach people on how to do this method. And we’re excited to do it. So keep that in mind and just contact us from our website and say you’re interested and we will respond.

 

Dan (02:59)

Yeah, and we’re classroom teachers and what started as a tool for classroom instruction, we’re realizing is applicable to parents and the community at large. It’s pretty humbling and amazing, the power of conversations and how much people appreciate it. It’s amazing. Yeah.

 

Steve (03:15)

It’s character building, you know, and that’s needed for all the young people to have the chance to express like really big ideas and critically think. 

 

Dan (03:30)

And anyway, to go on this a little bit, it’s a skill. This is not something that comes naturally. You have to work at this. It’s like a muscle, but it’s so important. And like a muscle, you just, you need to work it out. And the more you work it out, the more natural it is. And it’s, I think it’s a very, very underutilized, underappreciated skill in society. And that’s why we exist, to help people have better conversations every day. That’s why we’re here. Are we ready? Japanese proverb. As I mentioned, this exact quote does not appear in any Japanese literature, but it’s often associated with Japanese aesthetics and philosophy. And so it shows up in their list of proverbs. Here we go. Now I’ll read it a couple of times. And this is one Steve we need to read throughout the podcast to make sure that we remember it. The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists. The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists.

Whoa, we need a moment of silence after that. What do you think this means?

 

Steve (04:50)

I’m going to start with an essential question. I don’t think this has ever happened, but why not? What is strength? And that is really a question for a human character. Because this quote is saying that being flexible to me and changing and, you know, bending, which you could argue is compromise, like a bamboo bends. We bend as people when we have a very strong opinion, someone comes in with something out of left field and we’re trying to come back a little bit and fit it to something else that’s foreign to us. That idea of compromising maybe a little bit is another word that I think fits bend. I’m thinking of this quote all about human character quality traits.

 

Dan (05:50)

On that, the bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists. I have a direct personal experience that is fresh that I can immediately apply this to, that I think ties into what you’re trying to say about human character. You mentioned compromise as part of somebody’s character that is bending, where you’re not, you don’t resist things. You bend. You acknowledge people and you compromise. I just went to a memorial service for someone, a friend of mine’s father who passed. And I think of grieving in this way. If you think of the human character as when something sad occurs and you’re grieving, you’re bending, you’re allowing sadness and grief to enter into your life. You’re bending in that way, you’re not resisting it. You’re allowing the grieving to occur. And in that way, you’re becoming stronger and more resilient as a person, as opposed to just denying it, rejecting it, and acting like it doesn’t exist.

 

Steve (07:06)

That’s another good application. ‘Cause in my world, the resist part is the stubborn person or the person that shows strength and obstinance and doesn’t bend or compromise or isn’t ever flexible, but just it’s my way or the highway types. That’s kind of the way I was seeing it.

but you were kind of talking about it as resisting an emotional outpouring in yourself, which can definitely screw us up if it’s real and we’re not expressing ourselves. So that’s interesting. I didn’t think of it. Well, that’s ‘cause it’s fresh in your mind. And this is what, this is why I love the method. You’re going to bring something in that’s fresh and it’s going to fit. The method is you want to talk about something that bends. That thing is adaptable, right, to this. But I get what you’re saying.

 

Dan (08:08)

Yeah, the bending is the strength. You become strong when you bend and allow grieving to occur. It’s interesting. It is a human. You show strength. Well, yeah, it’s stronger. It’s stronger to bend but not break. That makes you stronger than just trying to put up a wall of resistance. It’s almost like saying to life, OK, you just threw something at me, a death. I’m gonna take it. I’m gonna bend and I’m gonna become stronger as a result of this experience. I’m not gonna be broken.

 

Steve (08:44)

Yeah, so I bend, I never thought of that. I bend and then I go back to being straight. But now I’m even more flexible. That’s a strength in a way. You can’t break me. That’s pretty cool. I mean, that’s really the claim here. Strength is in being flexible.

 

Dan (09:12)

Adaptability, flexibility is strength. So if you just think of a rubber band, you know, a rubber band is flexible. That’s what makes it strong and able to hold, you know, a huge stack of papers or whatever.

 

Steve (09:38)

Yeah, so counterclaim it.

 

Dan (09:42)

The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists. Well, my brain to the counterclaim goes, the oak that resists is stronger than the bamboo that bends.

 

Steve (09:57)

Right, and I don’t know why, but I just had in my head a car that went off the road and it ran into a bamboo, I don’t know, are they, is it a bamboo field? It would not be stopped by the bamboo. It would just roll right over it, but it would hit the tree and be thud. You know, ‘cause the tree could resist that it could stop a car. All right. That’s my beginning for a counterclaim, you know, but I’m going to go back to human character again.

 

Dan (10:34)

Right. I got something. If you think back to what you said earlier about stubbornness, if a person has a strong moral character and they’re unwilling to compromise their core values, let’s say in telling the truth or doing the right thing in certain situations, that the strength comes in their resistance to temptation to bend, to lie, to compromise and weaken their stances. They don’t give in to other people’s influence. I gotta go to Lincoln, like Abraham Lincoln, his position on the expansion of slavery was never bending was his chain of steel was the metaphor he literally used in one of his speeches that for some things, the strength is the resistance. That oak that’s the most important thing and that bending is weaker

 

Steve (11:49)

Yeah, there are a lot of cases like that. You have to have conviction. You know, you have to stand your ground so you’re reliable and you’re loyal to your friends, for instance, you know.

There’s so many cases where you have to put a line in the sand for certain things. You have to stand for principles. If you’re bending, you’re not being a good person. You’re not, you know, being an upstanding moral person. You’ve got to draw a line in the sand sometimes. Right? Right.

 

Dan (12:26)

Yeah, in philosophy, we have discussions in my high school philosophy class that I teach, we have discussions about certain things that people might do that bother you. And I ask them, what’s your red line? What’s the thing that you will, no matter what, be intolerant of, you will not tolerate it. You will not bend to different principles. You will hold firm non-negotiables.

 

Steve (12:50)

Non-negotiable.

 

Dan (12:54)

I bring up the example as a teacher when I join into this discussion and I say, if a student disrespects another student publicly by saying something and I catch it, I’m not letting that go. I’m going to be the oak that resists. That’s a strong thing. That’s a position to take that in that case makes sense because you don’t want to give oxygen to the other way.

 

Steve (13:23)

I’m gonna go to Teach Different on that one and how we’re coming up on an eight year birthday. And just like any startup organization, you don’t always know when or if it’s gonna be successful, right? You go through different, I don’t know, doubts is a way to say it because we’re both educators and we have this organization Teach Different that’s something we really enjoy and it’s very fulfilling for us. Doubts do creep in sometimes when you ask yourself, well, is this gonna be the thing that you want it to be or the thing that you hope it’s gonna be? And you’re gonna have everybody having conversations and you’re gonna have this method that’s gonna be used everywhere and it’s gonna be helping everyone. Not every day you wake up and you believe that and you’re seeing that. Bending in that case might be something like well, you know, I’m good. I’ve had a career of teaching. We tried Teach Different now it’s kind of like a hobby and that’s cool. I mean, I’m not gonna overreact to it not becoming as big as I thought it was gonna come or become and that’s actually something I have not been bending on. I am committed to it becoming big and every time a doubt would seep in, I’m just going to route it out. If there’s no need for that, it doesn’t fit anywhere, I’m just going to basically put it out of mind. Wake up the next day, all right, next, what am I going to do for this thing? So that’s kind of stubbornness a little bit, right? To have ambition, I guess, for something and to have a belief.

 

Dan (15:15)

Yeah, see maybe it’s just to see a belief through, to see an idea through. You could apply that to a sports team. The oak that resists would be never settle for anything less than a championship. Don’t bend and think that, well, we got to the conference finals. It was a perfectly good year because we reached our potential. No, the goal becomes your oak that resists. And ultimately, going with the counterclaim, that is stronger than the bamboo that bends. Because if you don’t have that fixed star in your head, that fixed goal, then you’ll always succumb to being second best in everything. You’ll always justify and rationalize your lack of success.

 

Steve (16:03)

There you go. Because that’s a way of bending. When you justify your lack of success, you say, didn’t mean, I didn’t really want it that bad. So I’m just going to move on to something else. That’s just like me when I got cut from the basketball team in middle school. I just pretended like I didn’t care about it. That was my way of bending. And that’s dangerous. Not dangerous, but that’s not healthy on some level. If you don’t pick something that is non-negotiable and you’re gonna go after it and you stick to that strength, you’re missing out on potentially just incredible achievement if you’re just bending all the time and you’re being flexible. I gotta say, totally, going back to the claim, I totally respect people that are not so far in one direction and they have a balance to their character, bending, whatever you wanna call it. I just respect people more that are like that personally, because I think it’s hard.

 

Dan (17:08)

Yeah, and I think it is strength. And back to what you brought up at the beginning with compromise, I think people who are able to bend and compromise and see opportunities to forge common solutions to problems are the strongest people in the world. And that the weak ones are the ones that resist like an oak out of some need to protect their fragile egos. Yeah, like what…

 

Steve (17:33)

Yeah, what are you afraid of?

 

Dan (17:36)

Are you afraid of compromising something? And again, but it depends on the context. Now the questions are coming. I don’t know about you,  one question I would have is how do I know when being flexible is the right way to be in a given situation? How do I know when to stand firm like a mighty oak with my beliefs?

 

Steve (18:02)

That’s good. Which beliefs are worth it?

 

Dan (18:10)

Right, which beliefs are worthy of my consistent firm attention without adaptability and without flexibility? That would be a good question to end with, to let the kids reflect on. Share a belief that you are flexible on, where you’re like a bamboo, and then share a belief where you are not, where you are  fixed. That would be a good follow-up.

 

Steve (18:39)

Yeah and that again is only one place you could take this right? The human character quality part of it. I mean, I started out with it they’re always the the most interesting to me but –

 

Dan (18:39)

Now, my social science brain is taking over now and thinking about applying, what if you introduce this quote before the Civil War and then you had the students apply the quote to Abraham Lincoln? Would he be more like bamboo or an oak? When was he like a bamboo? When was he like an oak? Why? Maybe that’d be a little bit of a higher level one, maybe in a high school class, but it’s so important to connect these quotes to curriculum, if you’re in a teaching setting, it’s a wonderful way to reinforce the themes in these conversations.

 

Steve (19:29)

Definitely. And those ideas are going in these modules that we’re creating, you know, these learning modules. Lincoln, real quick, you remember his famous quote, I’m a slow walker, but I never walk back. That to me is a combination of potentially being bending, but also being strong and being rigid. You know, because if you’re going slow, walking slowly, that is a way of saying you’re not in a rush to get anywhere. You’re flexible. You’re adaptable. You’re, I don’t know. I’m kind of reading it into it a little bit, but I never walk back is a non-negotiable. And he was, he was really impressive with that. He had very strong convictions, but he also was very open-minded. Remember his public relations baths he would have at the White House where he would just invite in anyone from the North or the South and they would just vent, you know, and he wasn’t afraid of that. He made himself available for them emotionally. That’s an example of bending in my opinion because it would have been easier to shut them out.

 

Dan (20:51)

Another question, how do I live a life of balance between flexibility and, I’m looking for the word uncompromising. How do I live a life of compromise, but yet not compromise my strongest principles? There’s so many spin-offs here. I’m thinking for a younger crowd, if you worked with this in the elementary setting, maybe the way to ask the question at the end is, what’s your bamboo? What’s bamboo in your life? Keep the metaphor going with the younger kids. It might be a little bit more of an appealing way to think about this. What’s your oak?

 

Steve (21:33)

Yeah, that’s good.

 

Dan (21:35)

Draw a picture, you know, they could, this could be artistic too, which is interesting how some of these quotes could be moved in that direction.

 

Steve (21:44)

A lot of times it comes from the East. Some of the quotes that use like nature examples, Native American quotes as well, they’re very rich with seeing connections in nature. And I love trying to translate them to who we are as people. Yeah, yeah, not like New York. Right. Well, this is great. I love this quote. The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists. A Japanese proverb that really is indicative of Japanese aesthetics and philosophy. Very provocative. This could be used in any setting. Love this.

 

Steve (22:32)

Send us an email. Just contact us off the website if you’re interested in piloting these modules I’ve been referring to and you’re a parent that’s homeschooling or you’re thinking of doing it, or you have a friend that’s doing it, we’re looking for people that are just like the method and want to see how it can work in a home environment. That’s it.

 

Dan (22:57)

Yeah, and this would be a great one to do with your kid.

 

Steve (23:01)

This, yeah, this would span different ages.

 

Dan (23:04)

Great. All right, thanks everybody. And looking forward to the next episode, which will be here sooner rather than later. Take care.

 

Steve (23:14)

Bye bye.