A 2,500 year old Chinese philosopher taught me something profound about living the good life

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The "Tao de Cheng" is one of the coolest books in existence.

No one really knows where it came from.

Its author is credited as Lao Tzu, which just means old man in Chinese. Scholars say it has a "semi-legendary" heritage, so we don't know whether it was one wise old dude who wrote it, his followers, or maybe even unrelated people. 

The text is probably best described as philosophical poetry, with thoughtfully inscrutable lines like "A drinking cup gets its form from clay, but the absence inside it gives it meaning." 

The book, which has been a favorite of mine for years, has come into special need for me in the past few weeks, as I went through the uncomfortable process of realizing that I needed to break up with someone. Then I had to follow through on doing it.

In the US, our culture doesn't train us to interact well with uncomfortable actions (like rejection of a relationship) and uncomfortable emotions (like fear or pain). We call them negative, though they may not be intrinsically bad, and flee from them with great haste. Some of my favorite means of avoidance include checking Twitter whenever possible and packing my schedule so tight that I never have a night to myself.

But there it was and is. The breakup. We had only been dating for a few months, so it wasn't going to be catastrophic. But it certainly wasn't going to be fun. Neither would the grieving that follows.

But Lao Tzu, be he one or many wise old men, had my back.

Particularly with this quote:

The sage "is ready to use all situations and doesn't waste anything. This is called embodying the light."

Embodying the light.

I don't know if this is the direct translation of the Chinese (a notoriously hard language to translate, given the fact that the way figures are painting shapes their meaning), but the phrase is so beautiful, and so powerful.

Without wading too far into platitudes, the thing about light is that it shines upon all things equally. Even on cloudy days, the top of clouds are roaring with sunlight.

So rather than trying to reject the inevitable memories that arise of my ex-girlfriend, I try to observe them, as all the meditation teachers I've read or talk to keep telling me to do. The logic of self-compassion, as I've heard it, is that if you can sit with and acknowledge your own pain, then you'll build the capacity to do so for other people — which will allow me to be a better friend, son, and brother when the people that I love need me to be there for them.

That is working with this situation. The wounding is also an opening. Don't waste anything. Embody the light. 

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