Doing Without Doing
Going with the Flow
Have you ever stopped to really think about the word doing? It’s all about performance, achievement, and effort, right? It suggests there’s someone doing something, and something being done, like a clear division between the doer and the done. But, is that really how it works? Or is there some blur between the two?
Taoist philosophy challenges this idea. It asks us to look at ‘doing’ in a completely different way. The core of Taoism talks about Tao — this all-encompassing force that flows through everything in the universe. From this point of view, nothing really happens separately. What we think of as isolated actions are actually just part of this massive, interconnected dance of existence. So, if we stop doing, the universe doesn’t stop — it just keeps moving, with or without us. Tao, the flow of existence, is effortless. Things aren’t forced; they just are. And that’s where it gets tricky: the distinction between the doer and what’s being done isn’t always so clear.
The more we push for things to happen, convinced that only hard work will get us where we want to go, the more we might actually be going against the flow. What if doing isn’t always the answer? What if we waste a lot of energy and time trying to control things that could be flowing naturally? What if life could be a bit easier if we just went with the current?
