51, Taoist Poetry, Reading, Digital Photography and Art, Blog
57
A river cannot be controlled forever
The more control sought
The more dams built
The more homes destroyed
The more beings displaced
Eventually the river reclaims its land
From dams to cutting rocky shards
To smooth beach pebbles … to sand
From river bank to watery dark bed
Tie yourself to a dam
get swept away
Allow the river
to choose its own banks
From sand to silt
desert to garden
Play upon its shore
Love the river
for what it gives freely
***
In these days of limited personal freedoms, vitriolic and propaganda driven election campaigns ... and fear, lots of fear, it is only natural that we might fall at times to the pull of resistance and/or high anxiety.
Fight, worry, fight, worry. Hide. Try to move things with our minds.
Do we join the light side and the Jedi Order, or do we embrace our dark side, and all those emotions that we usually try to suppress, and sign up for Sith apprenticeship.
To answer your obvious question: the light side is one you are already on, and the dark side the one you are not ... duh and obs'.
Or perhaps you will be like the Chosen One and bring balance to the force ... waffle back and forth ... good, evil ... good.
I mean. Come on Skywalker ... pick at side.
Flip the script, change the lighting and costumes, add a little ignorance and voilà, you are now on the dark side, aka the back side of the light side.
(Okay ... here is where I tie it together.)
Light or dark, the view depends on which way you face, but the flow of the force, the river, time, goes as it goes.
You can't actually fight the flow of things or who midichlorians gaslight, and you can't paddle with a lightsaber. Believe me ... I tried. You end up going in circles but it sure is pretty. BUT you and millions of your fellow Paduans can indeed paddle a boat and replace an evil emperor with an impotent and often corrupt senate.
t ain't perfect but it is democracy. So VOTE. Free will ... such as it is ... depends on it.
Vote, vote, vote.
But it won't bring balance to the force; only you can do that.
***
Words and Images are my own.
57 is published in 81, Poems from the Tao. 81 is available in paperback or digital through amazon and your local libraries and bookstores. Click on any title below to further explore and support my writing.
