Linchi

The Chinese used to employ a form of torture known as “Lingchi,” which is roughly translated as “slow death” or “lingering death.” We know it as “death by a thousand cuts.” It was the brutal and horrific process of slowly dismembering someone one small cut or slice at a time.

All too often, we inflict similar acts of torture in our own lives and on ourselves.

No one wakes up in the morning thinking to themselves, “Today is the day I destroy my life.” Yet, the choices we make throughout the day might make one wonder if that was the case. Although we may not make the conscious decision to ruin our lives – or to destroy our health, or to sabotage our career, or to endanger our marriage – the way we go about our lives often produces small but significant trauma that does exactly that, slice by slice. It is death by a thousand cuts. Lingchi.

It was not any one deep-fried candy bar or skipped cardio session that caused the heart attack. Nor was it a single miscommunication that dissolved the marriage. But rather, it was years and years of harmful actions and poor decisions – seemingly insignificant but powerfully cumulative choices – that eventually caused the ultimate destruction.

A little slip, a small slide, a minor compromise, giving in just a bit here or there, and after a while, the damage is catastrophic. It is often the small battles – either fought diligently or passively surrendered – that ultimately determine the outcome of the war.