Remembering my Tao

I don't even need to look at my last post, and I already know how I feel about it. Sad.

Not sad to have written it, but sad that I did it in that way, in that angrily immature way that takes hold of me when I see something new and react.

It's a reaction, not a coherent argument. But it was all me, so...what can I do?

I can go back to this book a shrink gave me a long time ago, called The Watercourse Way. It's about the Tao, a topic not recently in my mind given all the other crazy things I'm doing.

I started thinking about it this morning. I was up early with Erica, who had to be at work by 7 a.m. and miraculously left on time, lunch in hand. So I was happy and awake, staring at the sunrise outside her window and the Tao occurred to me. It occurred to me and, in a computer-like sort of way, I immediately tried to reconcile it. I started asking myself, 'The Tao? Are you still with it? You haven't consciously thought about it, but how does it look in comparison to your life?'

I decided to go for a walk by the Stoneridge lake.

I thought about a lot as I made those three revolutions. Mostly about the birds, the trees, the nice crisp cold in the air. I also thought about my future and how many times people have been asking me about graduate school. I also thought about the path that led around the lake, and how it almost makes a closed path, but then doesn't quite connect.

I observed the morning world, to the best of my ability. I watched the ducks search in a loose group for little bugs that had not burrowed far enough into the ground. I noted the moss-laden tree near the office and how the moss tinted rosy in the sunrise. I tried to see nature amidst the noise of the road, which was carried by the wind over the lake.

I thought about the Tao. I realized that each time I went around the lake, I thought slightly less about the path I was on, until, by the third time, it was no longer in my mind at all. The focus had changed to whatever caught me at that moment--the ducks, graduate school, the weather. In fact, I could even wander from the path, knowing where it was but not really thinking about it.

My life and the Tao are meeting in some way right now, I realized. I want the Tao to be what it is: "The Way." When I finally achieve it, I probably will never need even think about a Tao book again.