The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life by Michael Puett & Christine Gross-Loh

Author:Michael Puett & Christine Gross-Loh
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Body, Eastern, Philosophy, Religion, Inspiration & Personal Growth, Self-Help, Mind & Spirit, Personal Growth, Happiness
ISBN: 9781476777832
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2016-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

Strength Lies in Weakness

Weakness overcomes strength,

Softness overcomes hardness.

When we persist in perceiving the world as a collection of completely disparate things (this room, that dog, my cup, your book, you, me, them), we alienate ourselves from the Way. If, on the contrary, we sense how everything is interrelated and recognize that everything we do immediately impacts others, we become more effective. Once we understand how everything is interconnected and appreciate how, paradoxically, there is more power in weakness, we understand the workings of influence.

This might be disconcerting; after all, our culture places such a premium on strength and ambition. It’s no surprise that we end up believing at some level that the most effective way to “get ahead” is to get ahead of the next person. Without at least some competitiveness, we worry we will get left behind.

Here again we tend to fall into a false dichotomy: ambition versus passivity, will and strength versus weakness. In fact, although many who read the Laozi think it’s telling us to get rid of all ambition and be passive and weak, that’s not the case at all.

The Laozi is very much in favor of effecting change, but it provides an alternative way to fulfill it. The way we typically manifest ambitiousness is by imposing our will. This leads us to overreach, focus on the wrong things, and create the conditions for our own downfall. Our view of ambition and the way we usually pursue it is actually our undoing.

When you’re blustering about, when you’re trying to gain power by imposing your will on others, it’s not that you’ll fail. You may succeed, even for a long time. But the degree to which you can succeed is based only upon the amount of actual overt power you have over people to make them cave in. In the end, they will be deeply resentful and will seek ways to try to break your power. Perhaps most important, it takes only one person who understands the real nature of power to overthrow you. It took only one Mohandas Gandhi to end the British Empire, in 1947.

Think of Rosa Parks, the forty-two-year-old woman from Montgomery, Alabama, who, in 1955, at the end of a long day working at a department store, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger. As Parks recalled, a sudden determination covered her “like a quilt on a winter night,” and she chose that moment to refuse to move. This one person understood not just that the time was right to act. She sensed how a quiet response would be more effective than an aggressive one. Her strategy—to sit quietly—inspired fellow community activists to gather behind her in a movement toward equality.

Think of who is most effective in the workplace: the office bully who is always throwing around his weight, trying to dominate everyone else, or the one who is attuned to people’s emotions, to how they receive things, who uses humor and laughter to connect, and who stays ever aware of the atmosphere of the place.

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