When we are still and patient, we also need to be open. ‘The usefulness of a pot comes from its emptiness,’ Lao Tzu said. ‘Empty yourself of everything. Let your mind become still.’ If we are too busy, too preoccupied with anxiety or ambition, we will miss a thousand moments of the human experience that are our natural inheritance. We need to be awake to the way light reflects off of ripples on a pond, the way other people look when they are laughing, the feeling of the wind playing with our hair. These experiences reconnect us to parts of ourselves. This is another key point of Lao Tzu’s
...more
