22

If you want to become whole,
let yourself be partial.
If you want to become straight,
let yourself be crooked.
If you want to become full,
let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn,
let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything,
give everything up.

The Master, by residing in the Tao,
sets an example for all beings.
Because he doesn’t display himself,
people can see his light.
Because he has nothing to prove,
people can trust his words.
Because he doesn’t know who he is,
people recognize themselves in him.
Because he has no goal in mind,
everything he does succeeds.

When the ancient Masters said,
“If you want to be given everything,
give everything up,”
they weren’t using empty phrases.
Only in being lived by the Tao
can you be truly yourself.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, trans. by Stephen Mitchell

Friday morning, sitting here for a while at Starbucks. The day stands to be quite hot, maybe in the high 90s. Canada wildfire smoke remains around. TV meteorologists attempt to predict all of this with colorful graphics and a cheerful patter of certainty. Still, you must wait and see how everything plays out. There’s no forecasting of that. It’s mere entertainment slight-of-hand, because we’d rather be fooled about “reality” than to dive into the deep end, to see how deep it goes… After all one might drown!

Oh, just keep entertaining me…

We’ve been watching the streaming series on Apple TV entitled Smoke. The tale is about arson, a psychological deep dive into the self-being of two individuals that cope with their fate, what life has made them, by setting fires. One, is an individual dealt an impossible hand of cards by fate, African American, low-wage worker, raised in multiple foster homes, often humiliated as an adult. After lighting up a home, resulting in the deaths of two adults, he is apprehended. He takes his own life while incarcerated. The tragedy of his life caused me to feel pity and nausea.

Fire starter No. 2 according to the narrative is an arson investigator, who is also with a pain-filled foster home history. He becomes a tormented, murderous, calculating arsonist. This individual causes me to feel loathing, on account of the terror he embodies – especially to women. What is it about the species homo sapiens? What in us causes women to always suffer the most?

The saga of Smoke continues.

Arsonist No. 2 is yet to be apprehended.

The life that I must live continues too.