Question everything you have accepted as being unquestionable. Why are we in a perpetual state of war against people across the globe that we have never met? Why are our children forced to be confined to schools that look like prisons? Why is the creative impulse so routinely subdued? Why is everything in service of the state?
Rather than march into battle as we always have, we can choose to march a path where victory is more certain. The system wins when you “advance an inch” into its theater of fury. But the wise will “retreat a foot” into a reality the state cannot regulate. Realize that the state’s battlefield is a mental construct fueled by your participation.
We go down the road as completed warriors, retreating from the battlefield built for us, not because we’ve lost but because we understand the futility of the conflict itself.
Warriors say:
I dare not be like the host,
But would rather be like the guest.
I dare not advance an inch,
But would rather retreat a foot.This is called marching without marching,
Grabbing without arms,
Charging without enemy,
Seizing without weapons.No misfortune is worse
Than underestimating the enemy.
Underestimating the enemy,
I risk losing my treasure.
Therefore:
When equal armies battle,
The grieving one will be victorious.— Chapter 69, Tao Te Ching, translation by Stefan Stenudd.
I played the game. Oh, did I ever! I understood it backwards and forwards. I exited the battlefield because I knew that there was a better way to win. Not by the usual tactics. Not by accepting the design as it is. But by grieving it, retreating from it, and creating what should be.