Diverge

As you probably already know, The Analects were written by Confucious. And in case you don't know or haven't realized their is a religion based on the text that the mandarin man wrote, called Confucianism. It's considered one of the Buddism practices. Based on that, you can tell Confucious was a very influencing man of his time in China in order to have a religion based on his beliefs.

Now, coming back to the present from the past.

I found this complicated text: "By nature people are similar, they diverge as the result of practice." (Chapter Seventeen 17.2)

What the heck does that mean?

It's short yet difficult to comprehend. I had to read this several times to finally get a little understanding of what it says.

My understanding is that when born, people are all the same. They haven't had any other experiance to be different than one another. As they get older, every person starts to have experience in trying new things, making mistakes, and so on. This results in different personalities or the more growing apart of people. It makes people more different. For example, perhaps two people are almost the same then one of them takes up the hobby of piano. That person is now different so they are no longer similar.

Another example is that two kids are born the same yet in seperate households. One of the kids end up in an abusive household while the other is lovingly cared for. The abused kid ends up growing to be more aggressive and more likely to do horrid things while the other grows up taking care of others and is more likely to do good.

They started at the same stage but in the end were pulled apart.

I must say, even though the phrase isn't exactly advice, I like it. It explains humanity in an interesting way and makes me understand everything a little bit better.