Alexandersmap

    Tag: Lao Tzu

    • Where Am I?

      “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” ― Lao Tzu

      I was prompted to look at an old blog post I’d written back in 2019 because it showed up in my statistics. That one post has garnered hundreds of views, which isn’t exactly Seth Godin numbers, but it was one of the ones that got more traction than most. Historical, introspective and curious. I’d like to think I’m still those things, even if my focus has changed a bit.

      Back then I was traveling a lot more, we hadn’t had a pandemic yet, and life hadn’t thrown a few more gut punches our way. We all accumulate experiences over time—the good, bad and ugly. In general, I liked the way I wrote back then, I just hadn’t experienced the changes that would wash over me yet.

      The thing is, back in those days exploring place, I was asking the same questions I’m asking now: Where am I? What happened here and what can it teach me?

      Everything changes, and so must we. Each experience accumulated changes us in some way minutely or profoundly. It’s like that river analogy, where both the river and we are not the same each time we visit. And flow we must, always having been somewhere, always on to the next, and yet right here in this moment. What have we learned this time?

    • The Journey Continues

      Oh, if a tree could wander
      and move with foot and wings!
      It would not suffer the axe blows
      and not the pain of saws!

      For would the sun not wander
      away in every night ?
      How could at ev’ry morning
      the world be lighted up?

      And if the ocean’s water
      would not rise to the sky,
      How would the plants be quickened
      by streams and gentle rain?

      The drop that left its homeland,
      the sea, and then returned ?
      It found an oyster waiting
      and grew into a pearl.

      Did Yusaf not leave his father,
      in grief and tears and despair?
      Did he not, by such a journey,
      gain kingdom and fortune wide?

      Did not the Prophet travel
      to far Medina, friend?
      And there he found a new kingdom
      and ruled a hundred lands.

      You lack a foot to travel?
      Then journey into yourself!
      And like a mine of rubies
      receive the sunbeams? print!

      Out of yourself ? such a journey
      will lead you to your self,
      It leads to transformation
      of dust into pure gold!
      — Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi, If a Tree could Wander

      After a couple of months of earnest, enlightening travel, New Hampshire greeted me with pollen and Trump signs. Not the welcome home I’d have chosen for myself. We must be crazy, mustn’t we, to revisit the same irritants year after year?

      People try so hard to hold on to what always has been for them, instead of trying something different now and then. A walk around the World Showcase Lagoon at Epcot is not international travel any more than taking a cruise that drops you in a few places for a few hours each is, but at least it’s a small step into the unknown. Likewise, going to an Ethiopian restaurant isn’t the same as going to the country, but it sure as hell helps the family running the restaurant and might just inspire another step further into the world. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, as Lao Tzu put it.

      We don’t know how far our journey will take us, but we ought to venture while we can. Do the things that challenge our perception of the world. Give others the freedom to follow their own path, that they may broaden our own perspective. It’s not such a far-fetched concept, is it? We must go through our lives knowing we’re taking a first step into the unknown with every step. Change is the only constant.

      So where do we go from here? Bold and audacious challenges, or shrinking to fit who we once were? Those shoes don’t fit anymore friend—we’ve come too far in our development to squeeze back into some idolized version of who we once were. Set a course and step to it. The journey into the self continues.

    • Serenity

      “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” — Lao Tzu

      We are time travelers, landing from one stage of life to the next. Each leap offers a landing, each landing offers a leap. We choose who we want to be and surely try to be it. Sometimes it works out, sometimes we find our landing place isn’t what we thought it might be and we must leap again. There’s an underlying restlessness to living for the leap. There’s an underlying complacency to living with the landing.

      Somewhere within us lies serenity. We believe we seek it somewhere beyond ourselves when it’s been there all along, awaiting our awareness that the world doesn’t matter a lick if we don’t reconcile ourselves with it. Acceptance seems essential to a serene soul, aware of the world and open to the changes thrown at us from all sides. We may yet be serene even as life turns us upside down at times.

      There is no happiness without inner peace. There is no acceptance of a life well-lived without serenity. If we’re aware, we may just find that it was hiding there all along, just waiting for us to arrive.

    • Horizons

      An old trick, this habit of scanning the horizon in search of a challenging quadrant and wondering: Is this my destiny? A childish trick, for we know if we go far enough we’re bound to return full circle—to the point of departure.. What is it about that horizon? What lies on the other side? Not just ships and land and more of the same old ocean—but what is the magic that calls…and who am I fooling really? — Sterling Hayden, Wanderer

      We each look to the horizon, wondering at our destiny. Some look and feel it too far a journey, and maybe it is. Maybe we aren’t meant to endlessly follow the horizon. Then again, maybe we gaze out at such a distance as a way to stop us from ever going in the first place.

      “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” — Lao Tzu

      Focus too much on the horizon and you’ll surely stumble. Focus too much on the step in front of you and you’ll find yourself going in circles. The answer, of course, is to keep one eye towards the horizon with the other on this next step.

      As Hayden points out, the funny thing about chasing horizons is that you’ll eventually end up going full circle back to where you began. What he doesn’t say is that you’ll be a different person upon your return. Surely you’ll look at where you started in a whole new light.

      We chase all sorts of horizons through travel and writing and learning new things. A quest doesn’t always mean setting sail, but the analogy holds true nonetheless. For when we chase horizons we’re embarking on a journey of transformation. We all ought to chase horizons, for deep down, we know we can’t stay where we’ve been. Not when there’s so much out there for us.