The Taoist concept of wu wei is an interesting one. Wu wei, loosely translated, means doing what needs to be done by doing nothing. It’s the idea of “going with the flow” rather than imposing your own will on the world. To me, it seems to encompass trusting that I’ll know how to respond to any situation without trying to mold reality into how I think it should be.

I’m not sure I like wu wei because I like to control my life and anything or anyone in it, or I like to think I can. The problem with this tendency is that it usually backfires on me. One time early in our marriage, I was cleaning out closets, throwing away anything that was tattered or had holes in it. I purchased brand new underwear for my dear husband, so I thought that throwing away the old, stretched out pairs would be fine. I found myself that evening trying to fish the trash bag with those tattered undies out of our apartment’s dumpster with a broom. That was the first of many lessons about what happens when you try to control (or make helpful decisions for) someone else.

Seeking to manage and/or control everything and anyone in my life is exhausting, not to mention impossible (see example of trashed underwear above). It’s tiring to try to steer my adult children’s lives, and while it hurts me when they experience negative consequences for choices made, I find they learn more from it than had I told them what to do. And when they make wise choices (without a word of advice from me), I can see them grow in their confidence that they can trust their own judgment.

So maybe wu wei is an idea that is growing on me. Maybe I can trust that life is mostly joy and generosity, and for the times when it isn’t, maybe I can trust that I’ll somehow know how to respond appropriately in that moment. One thing’s for sure – I don’t want to have to fish old underwear out of the dumpster ever again.

photo courtesy of ThePhotoQueue