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DEC 26 - An actor will become spoiled if he is pampered. Playwright Kazuo Kikuta once said in the form of a warning:
To kill an actor,you don’t need a knife.
Just praise him three times.
That’s all.
What should a person do to protect him or herself after being treated overly well?
Far removed from the world of performing arts, one genius, physicist Albert Einstein, offered an antidote: “The only way to escape the personal corruption of praise is to go on working.”
(From “Ainshutain 150 no Kotoba”, 150 quotes by Einstein).
Stay on track and get right back to work. That’s his message.
“The Nobel Prize is already in the past for me. [The pure gold medal] will be carefully stored, and I doubt I’ll see it again.”
I was deeply impressed by the above words by Shinya Yamanaka, 50, a Kyoto University professor. He said that from this point on he wants to do his work as a scientist humbly. For the Nobel laureate, neither a warning from a playwright nor an admonition from a physicist were necessary. The man’s mind seems to be already back in his laboratory.
A person like Mr. Yamanaka, who has not been corrupted even after winning a flood of praise, is praiseworthy. Yet such praiseworthiness may be of no use to me personally.
I wish, if only once in my life, I could receive such a flood of praise, a “sweet poison” that would turn me arrogant and corrupt. But this is just an ordinary man muttering to himself.
Posted on: 2012-12-27 08:41

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