“When I Let Go...” - Lao Tzu About One’s Own Potential
"When I let go of what I am, I become what I could be.
- Lao Tzu / Laozi / Lau Tzu
When I let go of what I have, I get what I need."
What this quote means?
If I already have both hands full of something, I can't pick up anything new. It is the same with our mind, or with our character. If I cling too tightly to my existing character traits, I have little chance of developing further.
Lao Tzu describes this phenomenon excellently in his quotation. For as long as I do not let go of what I am, I cannot become what I could be. As long as I don't let go of what I have, I can't get what I need. However, we as humans tend to hold on to things even when they are not good for us. Once they have been in our possession for a while, we tend to identify with those very things and think of them as our own, which makes it all the more difficult to let them go.
As long as I am something, I cannot be anything else. Whether what I could be is better than what I am at present, I do not know. However, if I never try it, I will never know. Possibly it is not quite so black either or White, but perhaps some qualities that I currently have and some qualities that I could have are gone from the ideal - so more of a picture of black and White.
However, I will never be able to know that unless I let go of what I am, unless I let go of what I have.
Nature is a constantly changing and evolving energy, something like standstill is hardly to be found. Whether from fish to mammal, from conifer to deciduous tree, or from an uninhabitable rock to a habitable planet. Just as there is no permanence in nature, we should not believe that we can maintain a permanence within ourselves.
There is also something adventurous in it, to become what you could besomething mysterious and encouraging.
And that's what I think you should discover. What are you waiting for? There is an infinite amount to discover. Or to miss...
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