Softness is Life, Hardness is Death
Allow yourself to be soft
Allow yourself to be soft
Recently, my life has become like an oak tree attempting to stand tall against the raging wind. If the wind blows hard enough, even the mighty oak will snap. Bending to the wind isn’t in its nature. Its nature is to stand firm and strong forever. But in Taoism, humans aren’t like oak trees. We are a palm tree, able to bend and relax even through the roughest of storms. We may lose leaves and bark, but we don’t break because our nature is to survive.
While periods of raging weather often come and go, I feel like there has been more coming and less going lately in my daily journey. Funerals to attend, a house to clean, children to raise, publications to run and edit, websites to build, and finally, working for a company merging into another larger company. And yet, through all the wind, rain, heat, and dust of a Texas summer, I try to remain soft.
Laozi, the legendary author of the Tao Te Ching (the seminal text of Taoism), wrote at great length about softness. For example, Chapter 43, he states, “Gentleness overcomes strength, softness overcomes hardness.” Chapter 19 also states, “People need something they can rely on: highlight your simple self, embrace your original nature, and check your selfishness as you reduce your desires.” Laozi preferred to use water as a metaphor for the characteristics of the soft self. Chapter 8 states, “The best men (people) are like water, which benefits everything but does not compete with it…” Chapter 78 states “Nothing is weaker than water, but there is nothing better than water in overcoming hardships without alternatives. Therefore, weakness prevails over strength, and softness conquers rigidity.”
Have you ever attended a yoga or tai chi class? The exercises help you learn how to bend, stretch, and strengthen your body through movement. The similarities are not a coincidence but are on purpose.
I attended my weekly online Taoism class with George Thompson who runs wayfinders.global; an online community dedicated to daily practices with our minds and bodies focusing on the Taoist school of thought. It’s free to join and I’ve been a member since it launched a few years ago. Today’s lesson was also about softness. In it, he explained when we are alive, our bodies bend and move naturally. Yet, when we die, our bodies grow stiff and harden. Softness means life, while hardness is often associated with death.
So, I invite you to look into your own life. How stiff and rigid have you become? Is it in a belief or a daily activity? Does the thought of changing either cause anxiety or stress? Then, I ask you to try to loosen yourself and your mind through practice. You won’t wake up one day and be relaxed all the time because that’s not a realistic thing people do. Instead, the first step is being mindful of your emotions. Can you realize when you’re becoming angry in the moment? If you can stay aware of how you are feeling, and know the signals your body is giving, then you can practice allowing those emotions to flow out of you. Instead of being stiff and rigid, bend to those emotions, allow yourself to feel them, and let the emotion leave as naturally as it arrived.
Being scared, angry, sad, hurt, are natural and normal states of being. You cannot escape them as long as you are in your physical body. To deny yourself a part of who you are can be damaging not only mentally but physically through higher risks of a stroke, heart attack, depression, anxiety, and more.
One of the most overused, but still useful, phrases I like to use is, “Go with the flow.” The saying doesn’t mean to allow yourself to be trampled on, it means to move through life without forcing too much of the time. You can’t always push through every crowd or win every battle. Going with your natural flow, in harmony with Tao, will allow you to lead a gentler and less abrasive life.
