Thiruvalluvar: Virtue in Everyday Life

59.3-3.11 Framing Series, Set 3 of 3 (Ancient Philosophers): Essay 11

Welcome

Early in my career at Toro, I attended one of several multi-day professional development workshops. In all fairness, I cannot remember the title anymore. It may have been connected to Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, or perhaps it was simply one of the courses available to employees at the time. What I do remember is sitting around tables with colleagues, working through situations together, and listening to an instructor named Donna Greeno challenge something I had always considered fairly obvious.

Donna introduced what she called the Not So Golden Rule. Most of us knew the Golden Rule: treat others as we would want to be treated. Donna turned it slightly. She suggested that perhaps we should learn to treat people as they would want to be treated. I remember feeling a genuine shift in my thinking. I enjoy being recognized in front of a group. For someone else, that same moment might feel deeply uncomfortable. I generally appreciate critical feedback from people whose judgment I respect, especially when it knocks me off a perch I should not have been standing on in the first place. For another person, the same feedback, delivered the same way, may be discouraging enough that very little of it can be heard.

More than 20 years later, I still think about that distinction. The question changes from What would I want? to What does this person need? That does not mean abandoning my own values or trying to please everyone. It means that care requires enough curiosity to recognize that another person is not simply another version of me.

That is part of what led me toward Thiruvalluvar. A week into the second year of these essays, with our daughters now beginning first grade, I am arriving at a philosopher whose name may be unfamiliar to many Western readers even though his work has shaped Tamil culture for centuries. After Lao Tzu asked me to examine what I was forcing and Patanjali turned me inward toward the discipline of the mind, Thiruvalluvar brings me back into ordinary human relationships. His question is not especially complicated to state. Living it is another matter.

How should I treat another person?

In Conversation with Thiruvalluvar

As with Patanjali, history gives us surprisingly little certainty about Thiruvalluvar himself. Scholars disagree about exactly when he lived, with estimates spreading across several centuries around the time of Christ. His religious identity is also debated. Hindu, Jain, Christian, secular, and other readers have all found points of connection in his work, which may say as much about the breadth of the text as it does about the difficulty of placing its author neatly inside one tradition.

What endured is the Tirukkural, one of the great works of Tamil literature. It contains 1,330 compact verses arranged across 133 chapters, 10 verses to each chapter. The work is traditionally divided into three broad books: Aram, usually connected with virtue; Porul, concerned with wealth, public life, governance, and the practical ordering of society; and Inbam, centered on love. Thiruvalluvar does not isolate goodness from work, money, power, family, or affection. He places them inside the same life.

That may be what makes him feel so practical. Aristotle can lead a reader through extended arguments about virtue. Marcus Aurelius left private reminders that became a window into his effort to govern himself. Thiruvalluvar works differently. A thought is often compressed into two short lines and then released to the reader. The brevity can make the Tirukkural look simple. It is not. A short verse about speech, hospitality, gratitude, friendship, wealth, justice, or leadership can take considerably longer to live than it takes to read.

I have traveled through 16 Indian states and visited Tamil Nadu dozens of times, especially Chennai, formerly known as Madras, where I have close friends. On my most recent visit, my friend Antony and I went to the site traditionally associated with the burial of Saint Thomas the Apostle. My time in India has shown me how many religious, philosophical, linguistic, and cultural traditions can share the same geography without becoming the same. Thiruvalluvar belongs within that complexity. People approach him from different traditions and still find something they recognize.

What I recognize most is his refusal to let ethics remain theoretical. Virtue appears in speech, generosity, hospitality, restraint, gratitude, and the way power is exercised. Wealth is not condemned, but it is never treated as self-justifying. Leadership is not merely authority. Love is not an ornamental ending added after the serious subjects have been covered. Thiruvalluvar seems interested in the whole person, which makes it difficult to hide a weakness in one part of life behind success in another.

The Question

Most of us can describe the kind of person we hope to be. We have values, beliefs, commitments, and explanations for why we make certain choices. I can talk about family, faith, integrity, service, and kindness with complete sincerity. The harder evidence is how those words appear during an ordinary day when I am tired, late, irritated, distracted, or convinced that my interpretation of something is correct.

Thiruvalluvar keeps returning virtue to conduct. That makes reputation less interesting than character. Reputation depends partly on what other people know about me and how they interpret it. Character continues when no one is watching and when there is no advantage available for behaving well. I may not always be able to control what someone thinks of me. I can still decide whether my conduct deserves the reputation I hope to have.

If someone examined the way I actually live rather than the values I claim, what would they conclude?

The question has followed me back into the Load-Bearing Series. When I created the six pillars of Family, Faith, Community, Health, Passions, and Work, I was trying to avoid treating a meaningful life as one undivided idea. The more I use that framework with other people, however, the more I notice that the pillars do not remain separate for very long. The way I work affects my family. The way I understand faith should influence how I participate in community. Health changes what I can offer to everyone around me. Thiruvalluvar’s division of virtue, wealth, and love feels different from my framework, but it carries a similar warning: a life cannot be evaluated honestly by looking only at the part that is going well.

Faith has made this especially interesting. Some people have wondered how I can use a framework containing faith with someone who does not share my Christian beliefs. Yet when I have worked through my Load-Bearing Profile with people in China and elsewhere, I have been surprised by how highly some people score their own faith even when they do not identify with a particular religion. When I ask what they mean, the answers often move toward hope, belief in something larger than themselves, trust in other people, and a responsibility to contribute to the world around them. Their language may be different from mine, but the underlying seriousness is not.

I remain Christian, and I am not interested in flattening religions until their differences disappear. My faith in God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit is central to how I understand my life. At the same time, Thiruvalluvar reminds me that belief becomes easier for another person to understand when it is visible in conduct. If my theology is precise but I am cruel, selfish, dishonest, or indifferent to suffering, the accuracy of my vocabulary does not rescue the example I am offering.

Where I Meet This Question

Donna Greeno’s lesson still meets me first in relationships. Hanna and our daughters do not always need what I need. One daughter may want reassurance while another wants space. Hanna may want me to listen when my instinct is to solve. A colleague may value public recognition while another would rather receive the same appreciation privately. Treating people with dignity sometimes requires consistency, but consistency is not always sameness. The more I know someone, the less excuse I have for pretending my preferred way of being treated is automatically theirs.

That difference becomes even more important when I have some form of authority. A person receiving feedback from me may be carrying history I cannot see. Someone who appears defensive may be embarrassed, frightened, confused, or simply reacting to a communication style that closes them down. Understanding that does not mean withholding a difficult truth. It may change how I offer it. Grace without honesty can become avoidance, while honesty without grace can become an excuse for carelessness.

Thiruvalluvar’s treatment of wealth led me somewhere else. I do not read him as condemning prosperity. Porul includes the practical world of resources, governance, and social order. The question becomes what our resources are for. Warren Buffett offers a modern example through the Giving Pledge, which he launched with Bill and Melinda Gates to encourage extremely wealthy people to commit the majority of their fortunes to philanthropy. Most of us will never face a decision on that scale, but scale is not the only way to measure giving.

Christian scripture gives me a very different image in the story of the widow’s offering. Jesus watches wealthy people contribute large amounts, then draws attention to a poor widow who gives two small coins because her gift represented far more of what she had. That story has always complicated the easy measurement of generosity. Ten dollars can be trivial for one person and costly for another. The question is not only what left my hand. It is whether I actually felt myself release something I could have kept.

This is one reason I am cautious when generosity becomes only financial. Money can solve real problems, but poorly considered help can create new ones. I have seen well-intended development efforts around the world where outsiders arrived with a solution before understanding the local system. Agriculture is an obvious example. A crop can grow beautifully and still fail the farmer if it bruises during transport, requires inputs that cannot be sustained, has no reliable market, or solves a problem no one locally identified as the most urgent one. Spending money is not always the same as investing in another person’s future.

Our hosta farm in western Wisconsin has made stewardship physical for me. This year has involved countless drives as we prepare the first phase and begin building what we hope will become a significant nursery over time. We removed roughly 240 mature trees, many of them hollow, declining, diseased, or standing where the land had to change. I did not like watching them come down. Our response has been to plant far more than we removed, with a goal of adding around 1,000 new trees over the course of the property’s development and choosing species thoughtfully enough that the land can remain healthy long after hostas are no longer its central purpose.

The hostas may be my passion today. A mature conifer, oak, maple, or other well-chosen tree may still be serving birds, insects, wildlife, and people I will never meet 100 years from now. That changes the time horizon. It becomes harder to think only about what makes the nursery easier to operate next spring. Stewardship asks me to consider what we are borrowing from the future while we build something useful in the present.

Love complicates all of this in a different way. English gives us one word that carries an enormous amount of work. I can love Hanna, love my daughters, love my dad, love a friend, love a place, love God, and love ice cream without meaning remotely the same thing. Thiruvalluvar’s final book moves into the vulnerability of romantic love, longing, closeness, separation, and desire. I do not want to flatten that into a general kindness lesson. What I take from its placement is that a philosophy of life that can discuss virtue and society but has no room for the heart is incomplete.

Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey gave me another way to think about this. The traveler returns from an experience carrying something that can serve the community. I have received more than I can calculate from mentors, colleagues, customers, friends, family members, and people who allowed me into cultures that were not my own. Keeping every lesson as private enrichment would be a strange way to honor what I received. Some gifts become more complete only when they continue moving.

The same is true in coaching. I know I am moving in the right direction when someone begins a sentence by giving me credit and then catches themselves: Billy, you helped me… actually, I helped myself. That correction makes me smile. My role is not to become necessary. It is to accompany another person long enough for them to recognize something they can own. Helping is most useful when it increases another person’s capacity rather than their dependence on me.

What I Hope My Daughters Remember

As our daughters move further into school, friendships, activities, and eventually lives Hanna and I will not supervise, I hope they become interested in the difference between being thought of as good and actually becoming trustworthy. The first can occasionally be managed through image. The second has to survive inconvenience.

I hope they learn Donna’s lesson earlier than I did. Fair treatment does not always mean identical treatment. If a friend wants to be celebrated loudly, celebrate her. If another person would rather have a quiet word after everyone else leaves, let that be enough. Knowing the difference requires paying attention to the person rather than performing the kindness that feels most natural to us.

I also hope they understand that having more of something creates choices. That may be money, confidence, education, time, influence, physical strength, social ease, or access to a room another person has not yet entered. Hanna and I cannot know what advantages our daughters will eventually carry. I hope they use whatever they have without apologizing for possessing it and without forgetting that an advantage can become a way to make room for someone else.

A familiar illustration of equality and equity shows people of different heights trying to see over a fence. Giving each person the same box looks fair, but it does not necessarily allow each person to see. Redistributing the boxes changes the outcome. Real life is much more complicated than a drawing, and people do not always agree on what fairness requires. Still, I hope our daughters learn to ask one additional question whenever a rule appears equal on paper: Who can actually participate once we apply it?

Most of all, I hope they become women who can be trusted when kindness costs them something. It is easy to be generous when nothing important is being surrendered, patient when no one is testing us, or courageous when the room already agrees. Character becomes more revealing when convenience and principle stop pointing in the same direction. I will not expect them to choose perfectly. I hope they become willing, as I am still learning to be, to examine a choice afterward without needing to turn every mistake into a defense.

Leadership Through This Lens

Thiruvalluvar devotes substantial attention to rulers, ministers, justice, counsel, and the qualities required to exercise power well. That immediately moves virtue beyond private decency. A person can be pleasant in conversation and still create a system that treats people unfairly. Leadership has consequences too large to evaluate only by whether the leader seems kind.

One phrase from our current CEO, Rick, has become especially meaningful to me: We want to win, but we want to win the right way. I appreciate it because neither half excuses the other. Winning is still the objective. Ethics are not an ornament attached after the result arrives. The way we reach the result becomes part of the result itself.

I have encountered a similar simplicity in the Good Father program, where Luke, its founder, has shared three questions he uses within his own home: Is it right? Is it safe? Is it kind? I could easily add several more questions and make the framework more sophisticated. That would probably make it less useful. Those three questions are memorable enough to interrupt a decision while there is still time to make it differently.

Leadership also asks whether we protect people whose vulnerability may not be obvious. Sometimes vulnerability is financial or physical. At work, it may be the person who lacks the title, confidence, fluency, experience, or relationship necessary to defend an idea in the room. I have facilitated enough team discussions around CliftonStrengths to see the value of recognizing what people naturally bring. The more interesting question comes afterward: How do our strengths help cover one another without turning someone’s weaker area into a public embarrassment?

I think about that whenever someone is being talked over, dismissed too quickly, or judged for something the rest of us have more practice doing. Protection does not mean shielding people from every consequence or pretending performance is irrelevant. It means using whatever authority I have without making another person smaller in the process.

This is where servant leadership can become more demanding than it sounds. Carrying the heaviest bucket does not mean doing work everyone else is capable of doing. It means accepting the weight that properly belongs to the leader: difficult decisions, accountability, clarity, protection of the team, and responsibility for creating conditions where other people can do their best work. Service is not the absence of authority. It is a different reason for using it.

Social media has made that distinction harder in another arena because influence can now be exercised at a distance from the person receiving it. Words typed behind a screen can become sharper than anything we would say while looking someone in the face. Thiruvalluvar wrote extensively about speech long before a comment could reach thousands of strangers in seconds. The technology is new. The moral problem is not.

Reflection Point

Character becomes visible in the way our values enter another person’s life.

The Invitation: Let Virtue Become Visible

• Before offering help, ask what the other person actually needs rather than beginning with what you would want.
• Use one advantage you possess to create access, confidence, or opportunity for someone else.
• Give something this week that costs enough for you to feel the decision without creating harm at home.
• Notice one moment when equal treatment may not produce an equitable opportunity.
• In one difficult conversation, preserve the other person’s dignity while still saying what needs to be said.
• Ask whether the way you are pursuing a result is consistent with the person you hope to be after achieving it.

Two Questions to Explore

1. If someone examined the way I actually live rather than the values I claim, what would they conclude?
2. Where could something I have been given become more valuable by helping someone else flourish?

Further Resources

• Thiruvalluvar, Tirukkural. The foundational Tamil collection of 1,330 compact verses on virtue, public life and prosperity, and love.
• Thomas Hitoshi Pruiksma, The Kural: Tiruvalluvar’s Tirukkural. A contemporary English translation that emphasizes the poetry, practical wisdom, ethical breadth, and enduring relevance of the original Tamil work.
• P. S. Sundaram, Tiruvalluvar: The Kural. A respected English translation offering an accessible path into the compressed ethical and poetic form of the Tirukkural.
• Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. A modern framework for character, relationships, responsibility, and effectiveness that influenced some of the professional development conversations described in this essay.
• Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell’s exploration of the Hero’s Journey, including the return from experience carrying something that can serve the larger community.
• The Gospel of Mark 12:41–44 and Luke 21:1–4. The accounts of the widow’s offering, where generosity is considered in relation to what the giver had available rather than the size of the gift alone.

When I began reading Thiruvalluvar, I expected an essay about kindness. That would have been easier to write and much thinner than what I found. The Tirukkural keeps moving between virtue, resources, public responsibility, and love because none of them can remain untouched by the others for very long.

Donna Greeno’s workshop comes back to me for the same reason. Her lesson was not merely about being nicer. It required me to leave my own perspective long enough to consider another person’s experience. More than 20 years later, I still enjoy public recognition and still appreciate thoughtful criticism from people I trust. I have not outgrown those preferences. I have learned that another person does not need to share them before I can treat them well.

The farm extends the same lesson into land I hope will outlive me. Coaching extends it into conversations where the best result may be someone realizing they did not need my answer. Leadership extends it into the uncomfortable responsibility of pursuing results without allowing the pursuit to excuse the way people are treated. Faith brings me back to the question of whether what I profess becomes recognizable in what I do.

I do not think Thiruvalluvar asks me to become extraordinary. His work feels closer to a demand for consistency across the ordinary parts of life. That may be harder. Extraordinary moments announce themselves. Ordinary interactions rarely do. They arrive while I am distracted, in a hurry, working through a disagreement, deciding what to spend, or trying to determine whether to step forward for someone who could use an ally.

Our daughters are still young enough that much of their understanding of character will come from watching rather than listening. I can tell them to be generous and then let them see what I do when generosity becomes inconvenient. I can teach them to protect someone vulnerable and then remain quiet when doing so would cost me social comfort. I can talk about faith and then let them watch how I treat a person whose beliefs differ from mine. None of those moments will look dramatic enough to become a family story. They may still teach more than the words I carefully prepare.

Perhaps that is why this philosopher feels like such an appropriate one to encounter near the end of the Framing Series. The framing around a home eventually has to support real life inside it. Ideas about virtue are useful. So are ideas about wealth, leadership, love, justice, and faith. Thiruvalluvar keeps asking what they look like once another person enters the room.

Next week, I will turn to Saint Joan of Arc for the final essay in this set and the final essay of the Framing Series before My Life Under Construction moves upward into the Roofing Series. For now, Thiruvalluvar leaves me with a simpler test than almost any framework I could build.

How am I treating the person in front of me?

Thank you for joining me on this journey.

Live. Lead. Love.
Billy

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