To bridge the gap between perception and skill we need to build on technique, says the emperor Hadrian in Memoirs of Hadrian via Marguerite Yourcenar. Describing the emperor's early years:
“I was beginning to have my legend, that strange flashing reflection made up partly of what we do, and partly of what the public thinks about us.
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The technique which I was obliged to develop in those unimportant early posts has served me in later years for my imperial audiences: to give oneself totally to each person throughout the brief duration of a hearing; to reduce the world for a moment to this banker, that veteran, or that widow; to accord these individuals, each so different though each confined naturally within the narrow limits of a type, all the polite attention which at the bet moments one gives to oneself, and to see them, almost every time, make use of this opportunity to swell themselves out like the frog in the fable; furthermore, to devote seriously a few moments to thinking about their business or their problem.
It was again the method of the physician: I uncovered old and festering hatreds, and a leprosy of lies.
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Our great mistake is to try to extract from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.
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In most men I have found little consistency in adhering to the good, but no steadier adherence to evil; their mistrust and indifference, usually more or less hostile, gave way too soon, almost in shame, changing too readily into gratitude and respect, which in turn were equally short-lived; even their selfishness could be bent to useful ends.
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For my part I have sought liberty more than power, and power only because it can lead to freedom. What interested me was not a philosophy of the free man (all who try that have proved tiresome), but a technique: I hoped to discover the hinge where our will meets and moves with destiny, and where discipline strengthens, instead of restraining, our nature.”
A problem properly defined that opens the door to making more rational decisions.
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Memoirs of Hadrian was written as a testamentary letter from the emperor Hadrian to his successor, the younger Marcus Aurelius.