I am more patient these days.
Most of the time, I am patient with myself and with others.
I am in a lot less physical distress, despite big stomach pains still.
I am able to take things more day by day.
The key to life is to let the flowers bloom, without impatiently turning up the garden, to see if they’re growing yet.
Everything, and everyone, will grow and flourish in their appointed time; nothing beautiful and powerful and free ever arose and sprouted joyously from the engineer’s impatience; only from the humility and delicacy of the gardener.
Because the gardener knows everything and everyone has their own dao (their own unique and individual ‘way,’) endowed on it from Heaven or Nature (Tian), and not by men (Ren), he is able to let things be, and to treat the ten thousands things like jade, taking heed of the natural veins of every treasure, and how they run in a manner unique, inscrutable and irreplaceable.
He does not consider a lump of gold a clod of clay, nor does he confuse iron for silver; and yet he gives due regard to all.
He enjoys the fragrance of the flowers and the smiling brilliance of their leaves and petals, but he is not beholden to them, because he knows that all that grows and all that ever blooms for us, is precious, and it cannot flourish except by the infinite subtlety and wondrousness of its own inestimably brilliant inner law within it, a clear and shining testament of the higher law above us all, which lovingly enfolds and encompasses all knowledges without ever once subsuming nor o’erwhelming…
And the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.