The Tao Te Ching is full of images of suppleness and yielding: the wise man (the reader is constantly being informed) is like a tree that bends instead of breaking in the wind, or water that flows around obstacles in its path. Things just are the way they are, such metaphors suggest, no matter how vigorously you might wish they weren’t—and your... See more

Time, like the breath, is neither wasted nor spent. It simply is. The idea that we can waste time is rooted in the notion that time is something we own, something to be measured, traded, or lost.

But in truth, time is not ours to keep or give away. It is a river that flows, a stream that carries us, moment by moment, through life.

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