Be like a cat and let go of yourself
The more relaxed you are, the more flexible you are, the more lightly you land.
When a cat falls out of a tree, it lets go of itself. The cat becomes completely relaxed, and lands lightly on the ground. But if a cat were about to fall out of a tree and suddenly make up its mind that it didn’t want to fall, it would become tense and rigid, and would be just a bag of broken bones upon landing.
It is the philosophy of the Tao that…the moment we were born we were kicked off a precipice and we are falling, and there is nothing that can stop it.
So instead of living in a state of chronic tension, and clinging to all sorts of things that are actually falling with us because the whole world is impermanent, be like a cat. —Alan Watts, What is Tao?
- see also: we are wiggles, and it’s difficult to control something that wiggles
- future connections: the one constant is change, be like water, overthinking is underfeeling