The Tao - Verse Five

Heaven and earth are impartial;

They see the 10,000 things as straw dogs.

The sage is not sentimental;

he treats all his people as straw dogs.

The sage is like heaven and earth;

To him none are especially dear,

Nor is there anyone he disfavors.

He gives and gives, without condition,

offering his treasures to everyone.

Between heaven and earth

is a space like a bellows;

empty and inexhaustible,

the more it is used, the more it produces.

Man was made to sit quietly and find

the truth within.

These days I set less goals. I know this is contrary to everything society has told me about ambition, success and fulfillment, but for me, happiness is found with less goals. I feel the need to shed myself of goals because many of them require me to attach myself to a specific outcome. The outcome was one I derived from some conclusion I came to about what is best for me. Yet, that's the problem right there. The idea that I actually know what is best for me. You see, I can't count the times that I thought some event in my life was going to be great but turned out to be wrong for me. Or something happened that I thought was horrible only to discover in retrospect that it was the best thing for me. Therefore, I have no choice but to conclude that I could not possibly know what is best for me.

So, I punt. I give up the ball and take to the defense, which is to say I adjust and adapt to whatever comes at me, accepting it as what I must need at the time. I do experience attachment to outcomes, of course. I recognize immediately the need for a specific result when I feel the sting of disappointment. But I am able to recognize it for what it is and move past it quickly.

As for goals then, it's like my friend Kelly Anne says: Not so much.

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We just got back from Minnesota. The trip reminded me of the summers I spent there as a kid -- fishing, swimming in the lake, water skiing, tubing, riding 4-wheelers, driving the boat and getting bit by mosquitoes. And, I got to see my 80-year-old grandma, a women who fills me with comforting memories of being loved!

You haven't experienced Minnesota until you pet a sleeping pig.