“Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”
― Lao Tzu
Lao Tzu is credited with writing The Tao, although like many works from that many years ago and transcribed, and from the eastern culture before the birth of Christ, his authorship is disputed. The 10,000 things are in the Tao. And for our records, Tao is pronounced Dao. The Tao is translated as The Way. And this in turn gives new meaning to what the mice say when they say, “The waaaaayyyy things are.” Those mice are very smart fellows, that.
I know I’ve posted this or something like it, a photo of kissing camels. My backyard. Today once again I’ve been asked how I could leave Colorado for here. I always respond the same—a matter of being able to breathe. Yep, the tale of oxygen. The need for that which seems so simple—in and out. It’s amazing what that lovely oxygen does for the body, the organs, the ability to think. But I loved it there. I loved the place we lived in, the condo, the people, the dogs in the park, playing and running and loving. The running creeks, the backyard mountains. I had no desire to leave, only a need. The need to breathe.
And so it is that life has its way with us. A way that drives us into a vehicle, bags packed, Tula and Squeek in their seats, Willie Nelson singing “On the road again.” The way of it, the way of life. “Them’s the breaks, kid,” someone said. And so it is, how we sometimes put one foot in front of the other and go someplace other than where we belong, where we want to be. The place we still long for, a breath away in our dreams.
Just be yourself. What does that mean? How do we just be ourselves? At which age are we closest to the self that is the self?
Today’s results in San Francisco—the public defender win. Chesa Boudin won the mayoral race for SF in California. This is a fellow who stood up against the Democratic machine and all of their endorsements to win. This could bode well for a message that really does need to be heard. Democrats, liberals, progressives, all are quite sick of the slick, the machine, the corporate in any dress that does not truly represent the people.
And the Packers won on Sunday, though a bit of a sloppy win, still a win. We’ve a bi-week coming up so this Sunday’s a freebee. We’re now 8 and 2. Not bad at all moving forward. Especially when we thought we’d have to wait for 3 years while the new team got put together. That’s the normal when the olds are replaced by the new players.
British novelist Julian Barnes was right when he wrote in his book “A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters” that “Irony may be defined as what people miss.” And mostly people misuse irony when they mean poetic justice. That’s when people get their just deserts for how they have acted or lived their lives. That or another misuse, that of Karma, when it isn’t Karma at all. Likely it’s the “what goes around comes around” thinking.
Some quotes are just lovely of themselves, tho we might never find a good use for them. Consider:
“Yes, I have actually mined coal, and distilled liquor, as well as seen a girl in a pink dress, and seen her take it off. I am 54 years old, weigh 220 pounds, and look like the chief dispatcher of a long-distance driving concern. I am a registered Democrat. I drink.” ~ The Butterfly
From thoughts within a life where unlikely connections and rumminations occur, and odd readings mark sleepless nights. Why not thoughts of war? Why not Sun Tzu?
With my reread of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, I was struck by the connection to the war in Viet Nam, and of how it was likely we lost because of it. In the book, Sun Tzu instructs the army which is forced to defend—as the other, more powerful army, is stronger. And that instruction is clear: go deep underground. And that’s what the Viet Cong did. American soldiers complained loudly about the tunnels the Cong built, hiding, running, attacking, all of it a surprise for which there was no possible preparation. Our enemy was too deeply entrenched in an underground network.
Also, we did not stand much of a chance as we were the enemy who “did not know the Tao.” I say this as a translation, considering the references to the Tao as more symbolic than literal today. We can know the Tao if we live our lives as a moral beings, following Truth. Certainly our path of destruction with the murder of whole villages, women and children, bloodied the earth and our hands in the destruction of the Tao, hence we did not “know the Tao.” We were doomed, on this plane and on the other.
Perhaps then, the enemy read the Art of War, while the U.S. Generals, thinking themselves far superior, read the journals of modern warfare. Again, in a warning from Sun Tzu, we did not know our enemy. If we had, might it have come to a different end? Of course we cannot know. We can only speculate.
But I do know that—if I were the leader of an army—I would read the Art of War attributed to Sun Tzu.
Writers Ink—Writing and Stuff 