Tao Te Ching 13-28: Accepting Misfortune

While reading these sections of the Tao Te Ching I came to the conclusion that the writer wants to convince the reader that in order to maintain proper order in life one must remain passive. Passive means accepting or allowing what happens or what others do, without active response or resistance. And not even accepting the good things, misfortune is included in passiveness. This next quote proves my point, “Accept misfortune as the human condition” (13). Ok. This ignites a violent combustion in my brain, until fumes come out of my ears and I can’t even form words with my mouth. I don’t understand. One cannot just accept. One needs to fight. Should we settle for misfortune? Is it even slightly acceptable to conform being misfortunate? There are just unspoken rules in life that are instinct, unless you are retarded. Rule number one, you want to be happy. You want to be happy. Period. So if you are misfortunate and you are here to be happy, you smile. You make your best effort to be happy. You don’t even have to smile, maybe that doesn’t make you happy. Maybe frowning at strangers makes you happy. So, frown at strangers. But, never ever settle. We can’t accept misfortune as the human condition! What is misfortune to this book, anyway?

These were all my feelings while I was reading. I thought that perhaps I was thinking too drastically about this and maybe I should calm down and keep reading and hope for some sort of apology for this disappointing statement. So I kept on reading and shortly thereafter I ran into this quote, “Misfortune comes from having a body. Without a body, how can there be misfortune?” A body to me represents all things superficial. When you think of bodies, you think of publicity, models, billboards, beer, magazines, etc… You picture beautiful women flaunting their perfect bodies to the world making teenagers insecure and making independent women depressed. Anyway, we are talking about everything superficial if you take the word “body”, literally. It’s all in how much you love yourself and how others love you. Take for example this quote, “Love the world as your own self, then you can truly care for all things” (13). If we reflect physically what we are inside, aren’t we “truly taking care of all things”? Or you can also see it this way, as soon as you love the world as much as you love yourself, then you can “truly care for all things”.

What if we didn’t have superficial concerns? Maybe if we didn’t have a body we’d have more time to focus on making our inner being better and more passive. Instead of worrying about how we look, we’d be worried about how we act because we wouldn’t have a look. We wouldn’t have a body. What if we were all just wandering souls speaking to each other through echoes and what if we had no body or face or anything? What if we were simply air? We would be air that thinks and feels, of course. Would that make us less misfortunate, not having bodies? The ancient masters in Tao Te Ching are described in the following way: “The ancient masters were subtle, mysterious, profound, responsive. The depth of their knowledge is unfathomable, All we can do is describe their appearance. Watchful, like men crossing a winter stream. Alert, like men aware of danger. Courteous, like visiting guests. Yielding, like ice about to melt. Simple, like uncarved blocks of wood. Hollow like caves. Opaque, like muddy pools.”(15) Note that even though the writer stated that he would only describe their appearance, he does everything but. He describes what they portray. Their looks or “body” are not important. They are great and wise because of what they are, not how they look. They are seen as “yielding”, “simple”, and “watchful” because of what they do, not how they truly look without taking action. It’d be amazing if we all had the power not to judge a person for how they look before they speak.