Nothing gets left undone

I was reading a Garfield cartoon the other day. In the first two frames Jon says "I thought it was Tuesday, but as it turns out, it's Wednesday." In the final frame, Garfield sarcastically adds "But in spite of that startling revelation, ladies and gentlemen, the man is still able to function."

Chapter 37 of the Tao Te Ching starts "Tao endures without a name, yet nothing is left undone". Our concepts of the passage of time are very much linked in with names, words, descriptions of some kind. We work "9 to 5", "Monday to Friday" or if we work on a shift pattern, the times/days when we start/finish are quite clearly defined. And so often we find that as we travel along in this way, our time, our days, our lives seem to flash past in an instant. Yet we all remember those summer holidays of our childhoods where the days seemed to last forever, nothing was left undone and six weeks seemed like a glorious lifetime with endless possibilities.

As we grow older we become habitual clock and calendar watchers - we have meetings arranged days/weeks in advance; our lives become more constrained by time. But when we go on our annual leave, particularly if we make the effort not to read the newspapers, we very quickly start to lose track of what day it is and, all of a sudden, just as it did when we were young, the world opens up with endless possibilities - at least it should do.

How many people do you know that stay in email/mobile phone contact with their offices whilst they're on leave? How many people do you know who will only take a week's leave at a time? In our society's constant drive for efficiency, we have started to cram every minute full of activity, until we are in danger of finding our ignition switches stuck in the 'on' position with our engines operating at maximum revs. This sort of usage or behaviour is not sustainable; "extraneous activity inspire disgust" (ch. 24).

Tao has no name, it cannot be described, and yet when we are truly in tune with it, nothing is left undone. As in the Garfield cartoon, Jon has lost track of time, he is free; Garfield's sarcasm is like most peoples' understanding about time - how can you not know what day of the week it is, with the subtle subtext, that somebody of Jon's type can forget what day of the week it is because they don't have important meetings to attend, telephone calls to make/receive, etc., etc. But if we are truly in tune with Tao, we don't need to know which day of the week it is, without knowing, nothing is left undone.

Tag Taoism Garfield Time