"At birth a person is soft and yielding,
at death stiff and hard.
All beings, the grass, the trees:
alive, soft, and yielding;
dead, stiff, and hard.
Therefore the hard and inflexible
are friends of death.
The soft and yielding
are friends of life.
An unyielding army is destroyed.
An unbending tree breaks.
The hard must humble itself
or be otherwise humbled.
The soft will ultimately ascend."
The fundamental question of existence seems to be, "How can yielding to death give life?"
The corollary question is how not to be blindsided. And yet to anticipate loss has been the deepest wound in my soul. There is the saying, "Until you've found something worth dying for, you're not really living." But what I thought was worth dying for has continued to elude me. How I have continued to live when that for which my soul most longs continues to elude me, too--that is a mystery.
Through this writing, I struggle to get to the heart of it. I lay down my life on the page.
at death stiff and hard.
All beings, the grass, the trees:
alive, soft, and yielding;
dead, stiff, and hard.
Therefore the hard and inflexible
are friends of death.
The soft and yielding
are friends of life.
An unyielding army is destroyed.
An unbending tree breaks.
The hard must humble itself
or be otherwise humbled.
The soft will ultimately ascend."
The fundamental question of existence seems to be, "How can yielding to death give life?"
The corollary question is how not to be blindsided. And yet to anticipate loss has been the deepest wound in my soul. There is the saying, "Until you've found something worth dying for, you're not really living." But what I thought was worth dying for has continued to elude me. How I have continued to live when that for which my soul most longs continues to elude me, too--that is a mystery.
Through this writing, I struggle to get to the heart of it. I lay down my life on the page.
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