Today’s column, by Hyla Sabesin Finn, recounts her struggles to break her boy friend’s and, later, husband’s smoking habit.   

     What struck me about the piece is how seemingly mundane habits may reflect more fundamental problems in a relationship.  In this case, the smoking was uncomfortable and unhealthy for her, but tolerable to some degree (she put up with it for seventeen years!).  It was not so bad, in and of itself, to drive her away from him.  What was really bad was the deception and lying he used to cover up his relapses after his many promises to quit.  This is where she draws a line:

That evening, for the first time, I slept in another room. Smoking was
one thing, but lying, right to my face, was another. This was no longer
only about an annoying and unhealthy habit; it was about trust. If he
could lie so easily about smoking, what would stop him from lying again
about something, or someone, else?

     Confucius would agree with her here….

     Sincerity is of central importance to Confucius.  Hinton, in his translation of an Analects, does a nice job in rendering the character xin, which is often translated as "good faith" or "trust", as "standing by your words."  The Chinese character is made up of two parts: ren, person; and yan, words.  It pictorially suggests a person standing by words.  And this idea is at the heart of Confucian ethics: a person must stand by his or her words by speaking the truth and  matching words with action.

    This idea of standing by one’s words figures prominently in the first chapter of the Analects.  Here is a portion of one passage:

Above all else, be loyal and stand by your words.  Never befriend those who are not kindred spirits.  And when you’re wrong, don’t be afraid to change.

    This gets at much of what is going on in Finn’s story.  Her husband is obviously not standing by his words: his many evasions are reducing his integrity.  He seems loyal to the relationship; but even that is compromised by his fecklessness.  His empty promises raise the possibility that she has befriended someone who is not her kindred spirit.  And he certainly appears unwilling (or physically unable?) to change when he knows he is wrong – that is, both his lying (obviously wrong) and his smoking (wrong here in the sense of the wedge it is creating in his marriage) persist.

     What is most remarkable here is her sincerity and loyalty.  She sticks with him for seventeen years until he finally finds it in himself to quit.  Now, maybe the clash of smoker and non-smoker is insufficient grounds for divorce (though marriages have dissolved for much less).  There is obviously enough else between them to get past the smoking thing.  But it is something that certainly bothered her, and was undermining their mutual trust.  It would be easy to imagine how that could grow into resentment,anger, etc. – all the way to a breakup.  But it didn’t. 

    And that perseverance is a beautiful thing.  It is another element of Confucian ethics: the daily enactment of myriad small behaviors that make a loving relationship real and concrete.  Finn’s husband most likely lived up to his husbandly duties in other ways, however egregious his smoking failures.  And Finn herself stuck at it, too.   For Confucius, the performance of duty was ritual, and these two things together are the keys to noble-mindedness:

The Master said: "the noble-minded make Duty their very nature.  They put it into practice through  Ritual; they make it shine through humility; and standing by their words they perfect it.  Then they are noble-minded indeed. (Analects 15:18).