A Reason For All

The crooked become straight
The emp­ty become full
The worn become new
Have lit­tle and gain much
Have much and be con­fused
So the Sage embraces the One and becomes a mod­el for the world

Verse 22, Tao Te Ching

Yesterday, I woke up from a nap at four in the after­noon. Usually, when I wake up from a long nap, I feel grog­gy and uneasy, but this time I was bright and rest­ed.

When I went out­side, the rain had stopped. It washed the bird poop off my wind­shield, it filled the air with the lin­ger­ing scent of clean­li­ness. In my car, Becky start­ed singing in the stereo.

I had You Broke My Heart by Lavender Diamond play­ing here

And every time she hit me with the words “cav­al­ry of light” in her waver­ing vibra­to, I had to sing at the top of my lungs along with her, my voice crack­ing, my dig­ni­ty left behind me.

I can’t even remem­ber the last time I’ve been so hap­py.

This morn­ing, I was run­ning late for work. But by the time I got to the car, the sun had been out long enough to warm the breeze. I could roll the win­dows down and let the air in. The traf­fic made me even more late, but it let me take my time too. It gave me the chance to enjoy Lenny croon­ing to me about how true love leaves no traces.

It’s like I’m wait­ing for some­thing to go wrong, because I’m not used to things going this well. But noth­ing’s going wrong. Things are be work­ing out. Everything has a rea­son, no mat­ter how small or triv­ial.

Taoist the­o­ry says that sur­ren­der brings per­fec­tion. Don’t force any­thing. Allow things to hap­pen, and they’ll nat­u­ral­ly bal­ance out. Perhaps I’m final­ly believ­ing this, instead of sim­ply under­stand­ing it.

When things are going bad­ly, you’re not real­ly behind.

You’re just wait­ing for the good that would­n’t be pos­si­ble oth­er­wise.

4 comments

  1. But what is hap­pi­ness except the sim­ple har­mo­ny between a man and the life he leads?”

    Perhaps you are get­ting clos­er to find­ing that har­mo­ny.….

  2. Congrats! You’re almost there.

    Surrender” sounds a bit neg­a­tive. Maybe it real­ly means mak­ing peace with what­ev­er comes along.

  3. glad to see you hap­py again:)
    A nice song too!

  4. @Lucy — I like that quote because it does­n’t sug­gest chang­ing what you have, but chang­ing how hap­pi­ness is found.

    Sometimes I think I should­n’t be focused on get­ting clos­er to har­mo­ny, because I do expe­ri­ence it every now and then, but should be focused on mak­ing it last longer instead.

    @Uncle Joe — “Surrender” does have a slight neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tion in gen­er­al. There are many oth­er trans­la­tions of “sur­ren­der brings per­fec­tion”, some of which feel more tech­ni­cal­ly cor­rect, but none of them are as poet­ic. A cou­ple oth­er takes on the same words:

    To yield is to be pre­served whole” —Chan

    Yield and over­come.” — Feng-English

    Partial means whole” —Red Pine

    What is bowed, becomes whole” —Duyvendak

    Be hum­ble and you will remain entire” —Ta-Kao

    I’m par­tial to the Feng-English one as well.

    @Darren — Thanks…glad you like the song. Becky Stark’s voice real­ly cap­ti­vates with it’s raw­ness and sim­plic­i­ty. I’d rec­om­mend look­ing up more Lavender Diamond.

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