Hokusai Katsushika, Great Wave off Kanagawa
Drops.
Water cleanses,
Gathers in the earth.
Tender. Invasive. Subtle.
Emerges a shining river.
When small, it is weak.
When great, it tumbles mountains,
Rendering great cliffs
Sand.Classic wisdom says that there is nothing weaker than water, yet when united, it can become a titanic force. Like a tidal wave. Or a river that cuts through gorges. This is called the yielding overcoming the hard.
Let’s look at it another way. Water does not overcome because it yields. It overcomes because it is relentless. It perseveres and does not give up. It is constant. Rock can block water. Rock can even hold water in a lake for thousands of years. Why can’t the yielding overcome the hard then? Because it cannot move. It cannot work its magic of being relentless.
Just as water must be able to express its true nature in a relentless way, so too must we simultaneously and relentlessly express our true natures if we are to be successful in life. Otherwise, we will find ourselves hemmed in by the hard walls of reality, and we will never be able to break through.
But how do we acquire such perseverance? We start small. As drops.
The highest good is like water.
Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.
— Tao Te Ching, 8
Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water.
Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better;
It has no equal.
The weak can overcome the strong;
The supple can overcome the stiff.
Under heaven everyone knows this, yet no one puts it into practice.
Therefore the sage says:
He who takes upon himself the humiliation of the people is fit to rule them.
He who takes upon himself the country’s disasters deserves to be king of the universe.
The truth often seems paradoxical.
— Tao Te Ching 78
I was really good at self-expression as a teen and into my early twenties. I think I lost a lot of that after getting married and having kids, and it got harder to define where me ended and they began. Especially when I was home with the kids for several years and going to school part-time. I played a lot of roles – mom, wife, employee, student, but didn’t really have much time for self-expression.
These days, I write, paint, and express myself much more freely. I’m old enough to be free of the fears of people not liking me, or of needing to set the right example for the kids. They are old enough not to be phased by much of anything from me. But there are still limits – I don’t have the freedom to just take off and travel as I would like, or to work on big art projects since I have no studio to work in. I”m hoping the new format of art journaling will let me express myself more artistically, encouraging me to do art work on a daily basis.
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