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To Grow from Yielding

8

The most yield­ing thing in the world
  will over­come the most rigid
The most empty thing in the world
  will over­come the most full
From this comes a les­son —
  Stillness ben­e­fits more than action
  Silence ben­e­fits more than words

—Verse 43, Tao Te Ching

Sometimes, tem­per­ance is the great­est weapon.

When some­one attacks you with words or tries to make you feel any less than your­self, you merely need acquiesce.

In doing so, you dis­arm them. You rob them of their only weapon — anger — and their words lose all mean­ing and significance.

Tai Chi, as the phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of Taoist philoso­phies, fol­lows the same idea.

Then you will under­stand the flow of inter­nal power, and, hav­ing repeat­edly prac­ticed and refined your tech­nique and explored your own aware­ness, you can use and con­trol your inter­nal power at will.

The T’ai Chi prin­ci­ple is as sim­ple as this: yield your­self and fol­low the exter­nal forces.

—Waysun Liao, The Essence of T’ai Chi

When your oppo­nent expands, con­tract. Create a void in your stance, and let them fill that void. By absorb­ing your opponent’s energy, you reduce it to nothing.

No one proves them­selves more inane than one who matches energy with energy, force with force.

I’ve finally come to fully under­stand such an idea. The the­ory made sense, but I never put it in prac­tice, and prac­tice is what makes the under­stand­ing com­plete. It was only recently that I had the chance to apply it. The old me was hot-headed with too much to prove. When faced with insult­ing, patron­iz­ing words, I would have reacted, instead of fol­low­ing the prin­ci­ple of wu wei. The sit­u­a­tion was a test of myself, and I passed.

From this I’ve learned how much I’ve grown.

Date  May 28, 2007
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Transparent Actions

10

We were watch­ing Boogie Nights, and in the movie, Scotty’s wasted at the New Year’s party. He tries to kiss Dirk, but Dirk throws him off. I asked her if she knew Scotty was gay. Until that point, I thought he never gave off any such sign.

“Of course”, she said.

“How could you tell?”. I had to ask, because I couldn’t tell. I’ve watched Boogie Nights with dozens of peo­ple before, and they’ve all asked if Scotty was gay before it even got to this scene. It must have been the 20th time I’ve seen this movie, but I still didn’t see what so many oth­ers did. My gay­dar can’t be that bad, I thought to myself.

“Just from the way Scotty looks at Dirk all dreamy”.

Dreamy? So Scotty wasn’t being par­tic­u­larly flam­boy­ant, he was sim­ply attracted to Dirk. It was obvi­ous to every­one but me.

Then I recalled Pat telling me a few years ago that a cer­tain girl liked me. He didn’t have some kind of inside knowl­edge, he said he could tell just from the way she looked at me. I never believed him, of course, because I had no inkling of such an mes­sage. I never believed him until she gave me a writ­ten confession.

It made me won­der, am I that obliv­i­ous? More impor­tantly, do I ever give myself away, do I ever make myself so vul­ner­a­ble, with such a look?

It took me almost a year to be com­fort­able enough to pho­to­graph Jenn (let alone get­ting over being so tongue-tied around her), because I was afraid of being too trans­par­ent. I always thought that by ask­ing to take her pic­ture, every­one could see how attracted I was to her. I would go around Aaron’s par­ties and pho­to­graph any­one but her. Now I real­ize that in doing so, I prob­a­bly gave myself away.

It’s scary to think that peo­ple may read me so eas­ily from sub­con­scious body lan­guage. A girl­friend once said that her mom asked how she would feel if I asked her out, about a month before I did. To this day I won­der how her mom knew I would. All we did was have din­ner together on Sunday’s. Did I steal glances from across the table? Did I look away when she looked at me? Did I lose myself in her face and stare?

Am I that transparent?

I’d like to think that I can hide such things, but how can I when I don’t even rec­og­nize what it is I’m doing.

How can I hide my heart, when I don’t even know that I wear it on my sleeve?

Date  October 30, 2006
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What Can I Say?

3

Things have changed.

I don’t write the same any­more, or about the same things. I’ve lost my fer­vent ver­bosity. Every time I sit at my com­puter, my mind blanks. Writing has become a chore. Even this entry has taken me days to think through. I find myself writ­ing and rewrit­ing every point, every paragraph.

In the begin­ning, blog­ging was a form of cathar­sis. Developing cog­ni­tively beyond my ado­les­cence was an emo­tional period, filled with con­fu­sion and grow­ing pains. The only way I could make sense of it all was to write out my thoughts, forc­ing myself to reflect and learn from every challenge.

It was also a use­ful tool in fig­ur­ing myself out, as a part of my life where I could approach things with the con­vic­tion that I lacked in the rest of my life. Now that I’ve gained enough con­fi­dence, it doesn’t seem so nec­es­sary to prove myself with words any­more. It would seem that I’ve become a vic­tim of my own self-assuredness.

I could fill this blog with entries, find­ing solace in the writ­ten word, when I was going through some­thing as sim­ple as a bad day. As time has passed, I’ve elim­i­nated most of the things that bother me enough to turn to this medium. It was a slow and sys­tem­atic process, both inter­nal and exter­nal. My new-found seren­ity has left me with lit­tle rage. I’m hap­pier now, and hap­pi­ness is too hard to write.

It would seem that I’ve run out of things to say.

There have been few epipha­nies, and even less inspi­ra­tion, in the last while. Maybe it’s because I’m in the mid­dle of a tran­si­tion. It takes a foun­da­tion of sta­bil­ity, some­thing I haven’t had in months, to grow. My life hasn’t quite set­tled yet.

Writer’s block is a sign that I’ve stopped grow­ing, a tes­ta­ment to what and how much I’ve been through.

But more impor­tantly, it’s a sign that I’m approach­ing where I want to go in my life.

Date  August 11, 2006
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What To Accept?

4

They always say time changes things, but you actu­ally have to change them yourself.

—Andy Warhol

Many of my rela­tion­ships, roman­tic or oth­er­wise, are often approached, at least par­tially, based on the hope that the other per­son will change. This change can take the form of some­thing as sim­ple as prompt­ness, as frus­trat­ing as tidi­ness, or as grand as self-centeredness.

Change, syn­ony­mous with improve­ment, has been the basis of my life. It takes a self-awareness of my faults, com­bined with a desire to change these faults, to improve. Assuming that oth­ers are the same way has been one of the biggest mis­takes I’ve ever made. When the veil is lifted, and I real­ize that some­one is stuck in their per­son­al­ity, I lose my faith in human­ity. For the frac­tion of peo­ple who are con­scious enough to know that they need to change, (and I mean this in an absolute sense, where almost any­one would agree that some­thing needs improve­ment, such as tem­per or closed-mindedness) only a frac­tion of those are actu­ally able to do so.

It’s not that some peo­ple have willpower and some don’t. It’s that some peo­ple are ready to change and oth­ers are not.

This means that when I meet some­one, I either have to accept or reject them for who they are, because that’s most likely who they’re going to be for the rest of their lives. I have to stop accept­ing some­one based on the hope that they will get better.

Acceptance, which has always been a dif­fi­cult thing for me, thus becomes the most impor­tant thing in my rela­tion­ships. It also remains one of the most hard­est things for me to change.

So should I learn to accept this about myself, the way I should learn to accept things of others?

Date  July 17, 2006
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The Inconclusive End

0

Over break­fast, a gen­er­ous gorg­ing of sausage links, over easy, and hashed browns, the real­iza­tion dawns on me that out of the eight peo­ple seated, four of us have worked in the same office.

In fact, three of us had the same job; while Aaron was work­ing as a devel­oper, Pat was brought in to replace Jacques, and I was hired when Pat left. What a small world. That’s how Pat and I met Aaron, how Aaron met Jacques, and it was only on that day, four years later, that Pat was intro­duced to Jacques.

Now we can sit around a break­fast table, fill­ing our­selves with greasy food and caf­feine in prepa­ra­tion for a week­end of gaming.

How long ago those days seem, work­ing in an unmo­ti­vated gov­ern­ment office, dat­ing some­one I thought I wanted to make my wife. I remarked to Pat how funny it was to believe back then that I knew what I wanted in life, and with a smirk, he asked me, “You think you know what you want now?”.

The ques­tion was rhetor­i­cal, of course. Sometimes Pat knows me bet­ter than I know myself. In his way, he was remind­ing me that even now, after all my con­tem­pla­tion and all my con­clu­sions, I still may not have fig­ured that out yet.

Do I really know what I want?

Not really. In my career, my rela­tion­ships, my short-term life I can say that there’s a path I’m mov­ing towards, but I also know that this will most likely change. As I learn and grow, as new goals are met and made, what I want changes too.

And per­haps being sure of this is what I really want.

Date  November 9, 2005
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Awakening: The Reborn Dreamer

6

I wake up every day look­ing at Death, and you know what? He ain’t half bad.

—Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp

Its not until you lose every­thing that you are free to do anything.

—Tyler Durden, Fight Club

I used to take pride in the fact that I felt like I could die sat­is­fied any day. I was at a place in my life where I couldn’t ask for more, and there was a tremen­dous sense of over­all sat­is­fac­tion. I had every­thing that I deserved. After that, all I had left to expe­ri­ence, every fall morn­ing caught or tear shed, was a bonus. Of course, the clos­est I had ever come to death was a minor case of pneu­moth­o­rax, which I imag­ine is as fatal as pinch­ing one’s skin between two Lego pieces while build­ing the Death Star, so this feel­ing was never actu­ally put to the test. I’m sure I’d feel dif­fer­ently if I ever came fright­en­ingly close to the end of my life, although just how much remains a mystery.

Perhaps this grew from a cogent sense of frailty, per­pet­u­ated by all the sto­ries of freak acci­dents echoed through­out the media. The stu­dent who impaled his heart on a num­ber 2 pen­cil while try­ing to catch a foot­ball in the mid­dle of class. The gen­eral who drowned in a pool of his own blood from a nose­bleed on his wed­ding night. Even the pres­i­dent of the United States almost choked to death on a pret­zel. To dis­tance myself was the only way I could deal with it.

The prob­lem, I’ve only recently dis­cov­ered, was that this left me alien­ated and unat­tached. I have no dreams, noth­ing to live for. Not even a goal to work towards. During high-school, the goal was to get into a uni­ver­sity. After uni­ver­sity, the goal was to get a ful­fill­ing job. After the job was the house. Now that I own a house, it feels like the rest of my life has been laid out in front of me. No risks, no sur­prises. I appre­ci­ate every­thing that I’ve been given, but it feels like it’s been a lit­tle too easy. Even my most sig­nif­i­cant goal was rather sud­denly accom­plished this year. As Logan Pearsall Smith once wrote in his book Afterthoughts, “How many of our day­dreams would darken into night­mares if there seemed any dan­ger of their com­ing true!”. A simul­ta­ne­ous ful­fill­ment and dissatisfaction.

I pre­sented this prob­lem to Pat, and from his infi­nite wis­dom (at 24, no less) I real­ized that one should never live for what might hap­pen. Otherwise, a per­son would go crazy. Of course, to truly live this way, it doesn’t hurt to be a bit of a fatal­ist. Having this belief means that one can only do the best that they can, and to go means that it was meant to be.

For now, I’ve been keep­ing myself occu­pied, until I can fig­ure out what I want in the last rest of my life. Blessed is the per­son who is too busy to worry in the day­time and too sleepy to worry at night. It’s only now that I’ve dis­cov­ered that I need a few dreams to survive.

And I can only hope to never reach them.

The Awakening Series

  1. Introduction
  2. Cause
  3. The Reborn Dreamer
Date  September 14, 2005
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