Hooray, hooray, I learned a new word today, two words really but it’s the concept that counts. Wu Wei.
Wu Wei means, the way I first heard it, to know when to do and when not to do, and I thought now that is a fine art. It goes back to the AA thing, the courage to change what you can’t accept, the patience to accept what you can’t change and the wisdom to know the difference.
It’s more than a bumper sticker. You can’t change the past, you can’t change other people, you can’t change the weather and you can’t change the fact that your going to die. Other than that, go for it.
Wu Wei. What Feng Shui is to interior design, Wu Wei is to actions.
Then I saw it described as action without action, like the planets spin around the Sun, in complete unconsciousness, like the trees grow without knowing the meaning of growth and I thought, well, that’s a little bit Zen, but cool, and then I saw about the Chinese concept that if a prince could position his throne perfectly, he need only sit perfectly still and his kingdom would live in harmony and thrive and I thought what a load of bollocks.
Archimedes said “Give me a long enough lever and a place to stand and I will move the world” but that last, overly literal interpretation of Wu Wei only includes the second half of that equation, and why?
Still, I’d like to learn more about Wu Wei.
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