Chapter 9
“Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.”
~ Stephen Mitchell (trans.), Tao Te Ching: A New English Version (New York: Harper Perennial), 2006.
One reason it is hard for us to “step back” these days is that we are always, at some level, plugged in. We carry in our pocket a portable Pandora’s box, perpetually propagating portents of end of the world, a taskmaster reminding us of all we have to do, and a tether keeping us “on call” to our employers.
Our attempts at achieving “work/life balance” are so many sad huts built on a beach in the face of an oncoming tsunami. The current of our culture of “total work” is a furious haste and busyness always sweeping us up and carrying us out of the moment.
The Daoist response is not, however, to fight the current, but to yield to it. In yielding to it, it slows; in rising to meet it, it becomes smaller; in working with it, it becomes more workable. Only in yielding to it can we be present to it, only in being present to it can we step back from it, and only in stepping back from it can we enter into it.
Only from a place of serenity can we truly do our work.