Be Like The River

Taoism has sometimes been described as the Art of Doing Nothing. That doesn't mean one should just sit around the house all day watching television and eating your favourite snacks.  It's about not forcing yourself upon a situation in which you have no control. 

In order to understand this better, I recently saw a post on Instagram that explain the concept quite nicely and it went something like this:

A river flows effortlessly downstream.
It doesn't stop flowing just because there's a rock in the middle of the riverbed.
Instead, it works its way around the rock to reach its destination.
Be like the river.

What it's basically saying is that there will always be obstacles in life and most of those will be immovable due to some higher power. If you use force to try and remove the obstacle, it will likely cause more distress than it would've to begin with. There are always ways around a certain situation that can still let you continue with your life without too much hassle. You just need to find the solution.   

I was a crime novelist long before I took the path of paganism. My very first novel, Pawn, took 7 years to write and was finally completed in 2007. Why am I telling you this? Last week, the Australian government passed a law that restricts hate groups from promoting their radical views on Australian society. While this may well work in some cases, it also seems to restrict the right of free speech in the general community. In other words, if someone finds something you said or wrote in a public or private forum offensive, you could be subjected to that law.

As you can imagine, being a crime writer, this can impact anything I write to a large degree. You never quite know who is reading your work and has decided it offends them. However, instead of putting a complete stop to my writing, I've decided to work my way around the situation. Last year, I started writing a fantasy novel which combined Chinese and Celtic mythology named Beyond The Realms. It tells the story of a power-hungry Asian fire spirit who crosses the forbidden boundaries of his realm into the Celtic realm in the search for more power. It is then up to a fire sorceress from his realm to capture him and bring him back for redemption. Unlike my crime novels, the main theme in Beyond The Realms is harmonious unity as the sorceress teams up with a Celtic witch to bring peace back from chaos caused by the fire spirit to both realms. 

As you can see, I could have just seen the new law as putting a complete halt to my writing career or I could've continued writing as if noting happened, and become a subject to the law. Instead, I've applied the Taoism principle of going with the flow and concentrated on writing a novel that promotes peace and unity. 

It's much better to play it safe than play with fire. Be like the river. Go with the flow.