Daodejing, Verse 26

Daodejing - Other Voices

When I was in the Army, we worked every day on our vehicles. I was an infantry mortar man in a motorized mortar platoon, and our cannons were mounted inside metal shoeboxes called PCs - personnel carriers. There are a gazillion ways you can hurt yourself working in, on, or around these beasts, and the Army is nothing if not safety-conscious. Whenever we were on top of our PC, no matter what we were doing we were required to always maintain “three points of contact.”

In other words, you could only have one limb waving around in the air at a time - the other three had to be supporting your weight somehow and keeping you balanced. It always seemed rather over-zealous to me until one day I saw a man fall and have his finger ripped off for neglecting this rule. Suddenly it made perfect sense.

Most of the time I’m walking through life with just two points of contact; my feet are usually firmly planted on the ground. But I take this for granted. And then when I get scared or confused, I find myself flailing in the wind and lost to any sense of direction. I can’t see straight to make decisions, and if I let the fear go on long enough, I might even lose sight of the ground - i.e. hope - altogether. In the past, this could put me in a very bad place.

The 26th verse of the Tao Te Ching reminds me to maintain my three points of contact at all times. And when the wind blows or the earth shakes, I won’t fall... because I’m grounded.

Fear has a blinding effect upon us. It also makes us want to pull our energies away from their purposes to fend off whatever is scaring us. These two things - the blindness combined with our energies shifting into self-defense mode - cause us to lose our ability to remain calm and think clearly. We become effectively helpless.

I can’t afford to let fear have that much control over me. I can’t let it steal my sight or my ability to function. I’ve seen how much destruction can be wrought when I’m rendered helpless by my own fear and confusion. So I will maintain some part of me on the ground at all times. I may not always be able to keep three points of contact, but I will never lose touch altogether with the ground beneath me. When I am blind, when I am confused, I can stop... I can imagine that one column of solid assurance (that hope!) reaching down through the the churning clouds of my confusion to touch the earth and remind me that I can still stand, and reason, and believe and choose wisdom.

It’s my choice. It’s my responsibility. It’s my potential.
~ from The Doubtful Tao, author Kyle Walker, original post date: 3/16/09 ~

This post is part of a series. For an introduction, go here.