Tao Te Ching 26

The heavy is the root of the light. The unmoved is the source of all movement.

If you let yourself be blown to and fro, you lose touch with your root. If you let restlessness move you, you lose touch with who you are.
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Who doesn’t long for an abiding sense of stability, being fully grounded, knowing that we’re standing on rock rather than sand? The answer is, the person who stays connected with the root of life, who stays aware of who they are, who doesn’t allow themselves to be blown about by every wind of doctrine, dogma or partisan rhetoric.

So many of us are addicted to movement. We seem to believe that life can only be lived on the move, flitting about here and there, doing this or that. We want to “lift off” and “soar in the wind” and go “higher and farther” than humankind has gone before. We call it “exploration” and “stepping into the great beyond”.

We seem unaware that the wind on which we soar is simply the prevailing wind of the day. Today it blows strongly from the west; tomorrow it’s a slight breeze from the east; another day it’s a gale force from the north or a hot, dry dust storm from the south. The wind that prevails one day is non-existent another day.

Our attention is continually diverted to the rustling of our branches and leaves. We forget about our root system, about where we came from and who we are. Leaves fall and branches get pruned, but the trunk and the roots remain stable and unmoved.

We seem unable to realize that the rest we cherish is the opposite of the windblown restlessness we live amidst. The rest we cherish is found in an abiding awareness of who we are. The restlessness we live is found in the desire to be someone else, in the attempt to make life other than what it is.

We scarcely consider the value of being unmoved. The greatest courage is often, if not always, found in someone who “stands their ground” in the face of a prevailing onslaught. When a tornado or hurricane tears through a community we marvel at the structures that remain seemingly unmoved by the wind.

Perhaps it’s time to stop and stand our ground. Perhaps it’s time to rest.