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The Tao is like a well:
used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
filled with infinite possibilities.
It is hidden but always present.
I don’t know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God.

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

Plans for the day were upended. After a succession of nights with about 6 hours of sleep, today I awakened exhausted. A sure sign that my youth is in the rear view mirror! I remember very well “burning the candle at both ends” and I simply shook off the discomfort to keep going, then. Time means change, and I have changed.

On the other hand… I feel the same attraction for these verses penned by Lao Tsu as in those youthful days of long ago.

403 to 221 BCE seems a very long time ago, yet not every thing has changed. That period for the Chinese is referred to as the Warring States Period. A violent death is a violent death, – whether on the plains of China pierced by an arrow, or in a trench in eastern Ukraine dismembered by a Russian suicide drone.

As best as can be determined by scholarship, these verses were compiled around that time. I read  possibly these were already received wisdom, an existing canon that was compiled to make the verses easy to remember, to be called upon for the appropriate occasion.

As a kid I once looked over into my grandfather’s well, a dark, empty cylinder into the ground. I remember that dark emptiness. I couldn’t imagine how deep it must have been. And the water was so cool, delicious on a blistering hot summer’s day. And you could always have more.

The writer suggests:  that to live well is not about any of the contending sides in a conflict defined time. The way forward is empty of any (of every) ideology. Before all of the religions, the churches, prior to conservative and ‘woke’ – our ancestors still lived in communities, caring for one another. The way precedes every one of our knotted, tangled, razor-edged partisan viewpoints.

Before any of the gods, there was (and is) a bottomless reserve of possibility for living well, humanely.

It’s just there. Still.

When exhausted, I can begin again! (Have another drink of naturally chilled water.)

I think that is awesome!