Born Soft – Die Hard
76
Men are born soft and supple;
dead, they are stiff and hard.
Plants are born tender and pliant;
dead, they are brittle and dry.
Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible
is a disciple of death.
Whoever is soft and yielding
is a disciple of life.
The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail.
Tao Te Ching by Lao-tsu, trans. by Stephen Mitchell
Upon occasion I wonder if philosophy is not a really ancient form of Wordle. Wordle is an internet word game. Philosophy has to do with language, there’s no doubt about that. To say as much is not the same as deciding philosophical inquiry to be amusement, a rarified exercise by trained academics, to keep going a pass time which in the West is older than Plato-Socrates, 400 BCE. The old stone-cutter Socrates didn’t challenge the young men of the Athenian marketplace with questions about justice for their amusement. Because Socrates cared, he would not forbear to ask questions of his contemporaries.
What holds more attraction for you and I? Surely the pleasure we feel at the view of a begonia plant in the vigor of bloom, is more interesting, stimulating to our senses than say the same plant past it’s prime…
Today is October 5. According to reports sharply colder days are in store. A wistful feeling comes as I contemplate fallen, fading maple leaves. Their work is done, and soon enough temperature and decay will return them to the soil. I remember the view of those leaves a few months ago, mint green, turned toward the morning sun, glorious to supply the tree with welcome nourishment.
What is stronger really, – the flexible, pliant, co-dependence and relativity of differences… Take the struggle of a toddler to walk, or when a somewhat older child is learning to make jokes… What has the greater weight, a mind frozen with doctrinaire certainty, or an attitude of mind receptive, probing the uncertainties of today, in search of new solutions, courageous to attempt what might be possible for all of us?
The hard and stiff will be broken.
The soft and supple will prevail.
