minimalism vanlife

On embracing opposites

May 7, 2019

My thoughts keep returning to opposites lately. Years ago I discovered the Tao Te Ching and it blew my mind. The concept of nothingness: that real understanding lies in emptiness, not accumulated knowledge or wealth, is not something I’d previously encountered. And then to read of the simplest thing: left creates right; up creates down. If this is the case then the further left we go, the further right is created, and vice-versa. What does it mean then to stand in the center of self with this understanding? To try and live a meaningful life & embrace nothingness? Is it that the more we have, the more we create ‘want’? I’m working on following intuition more, on being more open to the world & what she has to teach; existing more in the moment. The opposite of this though, I suppose, is ‘don’t believe everything you think’, which is that point where the mind presents events to us as fact when we don’t have any basis in reality from which to jump off from. I’m not sure I have the answers but for me, the focus is to live as simple a life as possible. Removing all the unnecessary crap from the daily life is scary at first: so much of our stuff becomes part of our character; so many of our routines shape who we are; our personality becomes inextricably knitted into the people & community we’re part of. But how can we think outside the system if we’re so bound up in it? A nomadic life on the road is the opposite of our settled culture, and it does offer new perspectives. The deepest understanding though has been that in order to see the world differently I have to become a different person.

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