Fukuzawa Yukichi
Did I treat those above and below me with the same weight today?
📝ONGO's Reflection
Fukuzawa's line, "Heaven did not create one person above another," was a single sentence that shook Japan enough to be engraved on its ten-thousand-yen note. But the true weight of that sentence lies not in political declaration but in everyday bearing. We bow to some and lord it over others every day, forgetting that those two people are, in fact, exactly the same kind of human being. Fukuzawa said that learning is precisely the work of erasing that discriminating eye. More than the volume of knowledge gained at school, the equality of one's gaze toward people is a person's true cultivation.
"Heaven did not create men above other men, nor set them below other men."Fukuzawa Yukichi, 學問のすゝめ (An Encouragement of Learning, 1872)
🌱Apply It Today
Today, look one server at a restaurant or café, a delivery driver, or a cleaner in the eye and thank them politely. That one second moves Fukuzawa's sentence into your own body.
