Humility and Water

The best way to live is to be like water
For water benefits all things and goes against none of them
It provides all people and even cleanses those places a man is loath to go
In this way it is just like Tao

• Verse 8, Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Translated by Jonathan Star

Warning:
I’m quickly finding that I’m the Jackson Pollock of self-actualization and enlightenment. This post is going to start out with what may strike you as a logical story arc, but don’t be fooled: there is going to be a ridiculous amount of splatter in the form of idea dumps that I can’t quite stitch together in any coherent fashion.

…Now onto our regularly scheduled post…
I avoid doing hard internal work like nobody’s business. If there’s an exercise in a self-help book asking me to reflect on a childhood experience, make a list of what brings me joy, or undertake some or other exercise requiring introspection, I’ll sneak past it. “Sure, good exercise, I’ll try it later.” Meanwhile, I don’t bookmark it, I don’t underline it, I don’t go back to it.

Of course, avoidance doesn’t work so well when you realize that your body is trying to tell you something. For me, it’s my raging knee pain that’s developed over the past four months, coupled with my ballooning weight. About a year ago, I was down twenty-five pounds, and now I’m up about seventeen. My mother watched an epic tantrum this weekend in the way I…