My father once told me that when he was a boy there was in the Cao family of Jincheng a pair of twin brothers named Cao Chun and Cao Dun. They were astonishingly clever, able to memorize whatever they read at a glance. Most remarkable of all, Cao Chun had six fingers on his left hand, while Cao Dun had six on his right. Six fingers are not unheard of among newborn deformities, but most often the extra digit is only an underdeveloped flap of flesh, with none of the true function of a finger. The Cao brothers’ extra fingers, however, were no different from the others: fully formed in bone and muscle, and capable of moving freely. This made their hands more dexterous than those of ordinary people.
Cao Chun’s extra finger grew to the left of his left thumb. By nature he was obedient and well-behaved, and from childhood he took great delight in the family abacus. At four he began to study bead-calculation under a teacher. After entering school, his grades remained excellent, and he was especially interested in mathematics. In 1979, just as the national college entrance examination was restored, he entered the accounting department of a university in Beijing. After graduation he was assigned to a bank, where his skill with the abacus quickly made him a key worker. Once the 1990s arrived and computers entered banking operations, Cao Chun resolved to invent a keyboard of China’s own, one that could enter Chinese characters with great efficiency. Three years passed in a flash. When at last he brought forth the result of all his painstaking labor, people discovered that this keyboard, with five rows of twenty keys each, could not actually be used by ordinary people at all, simply because they did not have six fingers.
Each person’s special trait is like Cao Chun’s sixth finger: if put to proper use, if one plays to strengths and avoids weaknesses, it can bring fine results. But if one takes one’s own peculiar quality for the normal condition shared by all, and blindly commands others according to one’s personal standard, then not only will one fail to achieve the intended end, one will do no good to others and no good to oneself either. One merely wastes time and effort.
Cao Dun’s extra finger grew to the right of his right little finger. Like his elder brother, he learned bead-calculation from the shopkeeper at home from an early age, and after entering school he studied diligently. But by nature he was restless, with broad interests and an appetite for all kinds of pursuits. His incomparably dexterous right hand gave him extraordinary practical skill. In 1979 he entered a military academy. Because of his hand, his superiors excluded him from the honor guard, and the extra finger on his right hand also badly affected the way he held a gun. In a fury, Cao Dun went to the military hospital and had the sixth finger removed. To his surprise, after the operation he found that his right hand ached constantly with a dull pain. Later even the entire right side of his body became agonizingly painful, and the dexterity of his right hand was never again what it had been before.
Many people know that unusual growths on one’s body, such as the long hair growing from a mole or a hard knot beneath the flesh, should not be tampered with. Such peculiarities are often where one’s vital line is lodged, the body’s most vulnerable points, where even slight damage may bring consequences that can never be repaired. So the wise know how to play to their strengths and avoid their weaknesses. To cut away one’s strength in order to patch a weakness is not wisdom at all.