Chapter 7 of the Tao Te Ching - The Eternal Heaven and Earth

“Did you read the news today?” he asked as he sat across from me at the café.

“No thanks,” I said, “I’m trying to quit.”

“Quit what?”

“Reading the news,” I answered. “My time is better spent looking at the flowers in the garden across the street.”

“But, how do you know what is going on in the world?”

“Why would I want to?”

“You have to keep up so that you know what to expect.”

“Ah,” I said, “I don’t need that. I already know what to expect. In fact, I bet that I can tell you what was in the news this morning and I haven’t read the news in over five years.”

“This should be interesting,” he said. “Go for it.”

“Let’s see,” I began, “Someone was killed, someone was raped, war is escalating in the Middle East and the price of gasoline is going up again.”

“You are right,” he said with surprise. “How did you know that?”

“Because that is what was on the news the last day that I watched it.”

“I suppose so,” he said, “but things are much worse than they were five years ago.”

“Of that,” I said, “I have no doubt. But I don’t worry too much. If there is any news that is important to me, it will find me.”

“How does that happen?”

“It found me today didn’t it? You have come here to tell me what it is.”

“True enough.”

“So, what is your news?”

“Oh, you already said it. War is escalating in the Middle East.”

“Why is that important to you?” I asked.

“I am really starting to think that the end of the world is coming soon.”

“People have been saying that for thousands of years,” I said. “But it will never happen. It can’t happen.”

“But of course it can. It would not take much to wipe out the entire human race.”

“True,” I said. “But that would not be the end of the world.”

“It would be for me,” he said.

“Neither Heaven nor Earth can ever be destroyed. They were never born. Therefore they can never die.”

“But if the human race is destroyed, what would be left.”

“Everything. People have been fighting for years to save the Earth, when what they really want is to save the Humans. No matter what we do to this planet, it will always remain alive. It will adapt and grow stronger than ever. Sometimes I think that the best thing that could happen to this planet would be for the humans to destroy itself. But, we weren’t talking about the end of the world we were talking about the news.”

“I thought we were talking about both.”

“That is one of the problems with people today,” I said. “They think too much.”

“So, what do you think we should do?”

“Nothing. The wise man will let the world run past him and he will sit and watch it from behind. In this way, he can see what is going on more clearly because he is looking from the outside. When he is needed he does his tasks without needing recognition. By working in this way, he gains true fulfillment.”

We sat for several more minutes drinking coffee and chatting idly. He looked at his watch several times, but he never realized that he was doing it. He lives in a very hectic world and he must rush to keep up with it.

After he left I thought about my past and the time when I lived in the same world that he lives in. Then I noticed someone at the gas station across the street. They were changing the price on the marquee. It was going up another ten cents.

I grabbed my backpack and casually walked home, enjoying the afternoon sun.