Waterline Principle

A principle is a spine. Waterline Principle is the sort of spine that lets a person, or an institution, stand up straight.

Applied daily, it changes less than you hope and more than you expect. That is how principles work — unglamorous, cumulative, and visible only in photographs taken years apart.

What this concept offers is a pause — one extra beat between what happens and what you do about it. Civilisation, someone said, is measured in that beat.

Consider the farmer. He does not argue with the season; he arranges his work inside it. The city man does the opposite — he argues with every Monday and is surprised every Friday.

Time is the one currency the Reserve Bank does not print more of. If this page made you think of one specific person, do not send it to them. Apply it to yourself first; that is how these things work.