The Way, and the art of not forcing

The Tao, the Way, is the one Lao Tzu opens his book by saying he cannot tell you. The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao, that is line one, and it is almost a joke, a teacher who begins by admitting the lesson won't fit in the words. But he writes the rest anyway, because pointing is still worth something even when you can't hand the thing over.

The piece of it I keep coming back to is wu wei, usually translated as non-action, which sounds like doing nothing and is not that at all. Wu wei is action that doesn't fight the grain. Water is the great teacher of it. Water never strains, never argues, takes the shape of whatever holds it, goes around the rock instead of through, and given enough time the soft water carves the hard stone into a canyon. The softest thing in the world overcomes the hardest. Not by force. By patience and by going low.

You have felt wu wei without naming it. The conversation that flowed and the one you forced. The work that came easy in one sitting and the same work fought for a week and ruined. Wu wei is not never trying. It is learning the difference between effort and strain, between steering the boat and trying to shove the river.

The gardener knows it best of anyone. You cannot pull the plant taller. You can only tend the soil and the water and the light, and then get out of the way, and let the wanting-to-grow that is already in the seed do the part you were never able to do anyway.