I accompanied my grand daughter in a walk through the neighborhood to her school. It was a fifteen minute walk. She traveled the distance on her bicycle, still outfitted with training wheels. She will be ready to have the training wheels removed soon. I double-timed my pace behind her as the bicycle enabled a relatively rapid transit of the four to five blocks to the school. Arriving at the entrance to the school, she left her bike with me, took her backpack of books, and happily walked into the doors along with others, her peers for another day of learning…

Later in the morning I reviewed an essay which reflected the differences between a meritocratic society and a society, improvisational, where behavior and competency develops from leveraging the array of circumstance that situates each of us, – within a society, a town, a neighborhood, and a family. The contrast between the two ways of life is dramatic, stark with difference. A meritocracy is nothing else but a illusion that you, and everyone else is 100% responsible for the outcome of their life.

Imagine discovering that you have a bag of lemons in your hand, it is up to you to make lemonade. It’s up to you to cobble together a lemonade stand, as you earn seed-money, which becomes a launch pad for your empire, leverage to be the lemonade mogul of these United States.

But wait, just suppose you are unable even to identify a lemon as a citrus fruit? Or perhaps the commercial space for citrus juice products has been taken by someone else? You thereby earn membership with the majority, the masses offering their labor, to serve  as “the market”… So much the worse for your intentions, for your efforts… You are “roadkill” in this American Capitalocene.

On the other hand, an alternative view can be glimpsed in the experience of my grand daughter making her way to her first grade classroom at the neighborhood school. She acts and behaves spontaneously, naturally, joining with others, in the unforced state of things. The thought is captured by ziran (自然), a Chinese Taoist term that represents acting from one’s innate, unblemished nature. There is nothing at all about her situation or behavior that is earned, to be credited solely to her will. Instead all arises as “self-so,” “so of itself,” a spontaneous authenticity mirroring innumerable conditions mutually manifesting as a biking-to-school-happy-youngster!

Think about it. We must. Our lives depend upon it!