I was late for work this morn­ing. The weath­er was beau­ti­ful on the dri­ve in. There were thick, dark clouds hang­ing omi­nous­ly in the dis­tance and high in the sky, but the sun was out, bathing every­thing in bright­ness. The wind was refresh­ing­ly cool, so I had to roll the win­dows down.

In anoth­er weird phase late­ly. Hyper again. Currently feel­ing this part from verse 35 of the Tao Te Jing:

Hold fast to the Great Form with­in and let the world pass as it may
Then the changes of life will not bring pain but con­tent­ment, joy, and well-being

Sometimes, I feel like I’m being test­ed. It has­n’t real­ly been going bad­ly, but it’s cer­tain­ly a mix of ups and downs, res­o­lu­tions and frus­tra­tions.

I start­ed to notice that I’ve been talk­ing to myself when alone. Sometimes I laugh aloud too. I once read an arti­cle about a young man who did a solo transat­lantic jour­ney by boat that took sev­er­al weeks, and he said that talk­ing to your­self is nor­mal; it’s when you start to answer your own ques­tions that you should be wor­ried. I think I’ll be alright.

I’ve come to accept the way things have turned out. I’ve felt this way before, but it nev­er last­ed more than a cou­ple months, some­thing that hap­pens when I lose sight of the tao. Hopefully it won’t be so ephemer­al this time. I just need to remem­ber that things will con­tin­ue to work out on their own. To stop try­ing to force things to hap­pen. To breathe.

And to hold fast to the way that can­not be walked.