After 26 years, I’ve real­ized that I’m a Taoist.

I dab­bled in Existentialism (after read­ing Huis Clos, revis­it­ing it when read­ing Thus Spoke Zarathustra), athe­ism (when I was dat­ing an Anglican), agnos­ti­cism (after we broke up), Nihilism (while read­ing sev­eral books of Russian Romantic lit­er­a­ture), Buddhism (in early uni­ver­sity), and Christianity (through­out my life). None of it ever felt complete.

In 2003, I hap­pened to come across a few verses of the Tao Te Ching. The con­cepts were dif­fi­cult to grasp at first1. Eventually, with the guid­ance of some Chinese elders, I came to a solid foun­da­tion of under­stand­ing, then approached it slowly and care­fully. I had put so much hope in find­ing a sys­tem of beliefs in the past, that I was scared of hur­riedly align­ing myself with the first one that bared a pass­ing resem­blance to my own.

More specif­i­cally, I’m a philo­soph­i­cal Taoist. I don’t believe in any poly­the­is­tic aspects of the reli­gious side, the div­ina­tion of the I Ching, or any of the archaic sex­ual prac­tices of ret­ro­grade ejac­u­la­tion and the like.

This doesn’t mean that I’m a per­fect Taoist, inso­far as there are no per­fect Christians, or per­fect peo­ple. The Tao Te Ching is my bible. It guides me on how to live and behave as much as it is a label of my exist­ing beliefs. There are things I have yet to learn, apply, or both.

I think I’ve always been a Taoist. I just never knew it. For as long as I can remem­ber, I’ve lived by the prin­ci­ples of bal­ance, empti­ness (or recep­tive­ness), and strength of flex­i­bil­ity. I’m glad that it’s a part of the cul­ture of my blood. It makes me proud. Understanding Cantonese has cer­tainly helped me appre­ci­ate the beauty of it all.

One doesn’t decide to become a Taoist. The Way is described as hav­ing no begin­ning or end. You must become one with it.

As such, a trav­eler is at his des­ti­na­tion at every part of the journey.

  1. I’ve come to see that the ideas are eas­ily lost in trans­la­tion [↑]