How to be softer

(Nimue)

I have a deep love of the Tao Te Ching, a text with a lot to say about emulating water. Flow, soften, yield, and move gently. I’ve always liked the idea. Increasingly I find it is not enough to like things as ideas. I need to work out how to live and embody and make real those things that appeal to me as concepts. Ideas that don’t make it out into the world, or into our lives in some way aren’t worth the paper that you didn’t even write them on.

How to be softer, then. How to slow down, and move gently. My Tai Chi teacher of some years ago used to talk about giving it about sixty percent. I liked the idea. Again, I’ve not been so good at the practice. A bit less effort and striving. Not quite so much focus. Pauses. Breathing.

For the first time in my life I have some grasp of how to spend time just being, without doing. I have mostly been a human-doing. That can be relentless, it is exhausting and it takes a toll. I’m learning how to ask less of myself.

The feeling that I should be doing more is a hard one to wrestle with. And of course wrestling with it doesn’t bring softness and ease, it’s just a different fight, a different way of manifesting the internalised capitalism. You can’t try harder at not trying so hard.

Softness calls for letting go, for acceptance and not being so goal focused. It doesn’t mean abandoning all ambition and intention – that’s never going to work for me. There are a lot of things motivating me, and I have no desire to let them go. But I do want to be more comfortable, and I am already on that trajectory. During the years of deep burnout, I felt ragged and threadbare all of the time. I’ve overcome that now, and am starting to ask questions about the scope for feeling good, and well. A different kind of ambition, and a better one.

Softly, with relaxed muscles and an easy pace. Softly, with plenty of rest and sleep and things that nourish my mind, body, heart and soul. Making more room for that soft, animal self.  Making more room for life.