Speaker 1: Have you ever wondered why, even though you have so much,
Speaker 1: you feel so empty. Why with each achievement, instead of peace,
Speaker 1: comes just a new list of desires. Why the more
Speaker 1: you chase something, the further away happiness seems to be
Speaker 1: more than Two thousand years ago, a Chinese philosopher named
Speaker 1: Laudsu looked at the world around him and asked the
Speaker 1: same questions, and he found answers that to day seem
Speaker 1: even more urgent than ever. We live in an era
Speaker 1: where everything revolves around performance. Every day is a marathon.
Speaker 1: You wake up and already feel behind you check your
Speaker 1: phone before you even brush your teeth, see people achieving things,
Speaker 1: living lives that seem better than yours. You compare yourself,
Speaker 1: put pressure on yourself, push harder, but enough never comes.
Speaker 1: Modern culture has taught us to believe that we're responsible
Speaker 1: for everything, for success, for failure, for happiness, for pain.
Speaker 1: We are our own bosses, and at the same time,
Speaker 1: our own executioners. Nobody needs to pressure us anymore because
Speaker 1: we do it better than any boss ever could burnout.
Speaker 1: Modern anxiety and depression have stopped being exceptions and become
Speaker 1: the norm. And meanwhile, we keep believing that the problem
Speaker 1: is us that we need to try harder, that we're
Speaker 1: missing something we haven't achieved yet. We live in a
Speaker 1: stress factory where each of us is both worker and
Speaker 1: supervisor at the same time. We never stop, We never
Speaker 1: truly rest, because resting has become a sign of weakness,
Speaker 1: of lack of ambition, of mediocrity. Modern society is the
Speaker 1: opposite of the natural flow of life. We live against
Speaker 1: the rhythm of things. We force everything, we try to
Speaker 1: control the uncontrollable, and in that we completely lose ourselves.
Speaker 1: For Taoism, an ancient philosophy that has Loud Sue as
Speaker 1: its central figure. Today's world is deeply unbalanced, not because
Speaker 1: people are bad or evil, but because we've forgotten the basics.
Speaker 1: We've forgotten what it's like to simply be alive, without
Speaker 1: needing to prove anything all the time. The obsession with control, status, consumption,
Speaker 1: and materialism has dominated every aspect of human existence. And
Speaker 1: in the middle of all that, we've forgotten what it's
Speaker 1: like to live in peace. We've forgotten what it means
Speaker 1: to be present, to be quiet, to be satisfied. Taoist
Speaker 1: wisdom emerges not as a magic answer that will solve everything,
Speaker 1: but as an antidote to this collective madness that has
Speaker 1: taken over modernity, Laudsou becomes an unlikely guide for the
Speaker 1: age of anxiety, an old sage who centuries ago already
Speaker 1: knew what we're just beginning to realize now. That maybe
Speaker 1: the problem was never the lack of effort, but the
Speaker 1: excess of it. That maybe the solution isn't to do more,
Speaker 1: but to do less. That maybe peace doesn't come from
Speaker 1: conquering the world, but from stopping trying. Laotsu is a
Speaker 1: historical figure shrouded in deep mystery. Some say he really existed,
Speaker 1: an archivist of the Imperial Court who one day decided
Speaker 1: to abandon everything and head west riding a water buffalo.
Speaker 1: Others believe he's just a symbol, a collective personification of
Speaker 1: Taoist wisdom accumulated over generations. What we know for certain
Speaker 1: is that he's credited as the author of the Tao
Speaker 1: te Ching, one of the most important and influential works
Speaker 1: of Eastern philosophy. A small book with only eighty one
Speaker 1: short chapters, simple in appearance, but loaded with a depth
Speaker 1: that crosses centuries and remains relevant today. The Tao the
Speaker 1: central concept of this philosophy for life can be translated
Speaker 1: as the way, the path, the universal force that permeates
Speaker 1: everything that exists, invisible but always present, indefinable in its essence.
Speaker 1: Laotsu himself begins the taute Ching by saying that the
Speaker 1: Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.
Speaker 1: This isn't just wordplay. It's a profound recognition that some
Speaker 1: truths cannot be captured by concepts. They need to be lived, felt, experienced.
Speaker 1: It's not something you conquer through effort. It's not something
Speaker 1: you master through force. It's something you align with, something
Speaker 1: you learn to follow instead of fighting against. Like water
Speaker 1: that always finds its way without forcing, without breaking, simply
Speaker 1: flowing around obstacles. Water doesn't fight against stone, doesn't try
Speaker 1: to be stronger than it simply flows, and over time
Speaker 1: it shapes the stones. And it's precisely this idea that
Speaker 1: challenges everything Modernity has taught us about power and control,
Speaker 1: because we were trained from childhood to dominate, to control,
Speaker 1: to force things to be the way we want. We
Speaker 1: learned that force is virtue, that aggression is necessary to win,
Speaker 1: that gentleness is weakness. The Tauta Ching turns this upside down.
Speaker 1: It speaks about flowing with life instead of fighting against it,
Speaker 1: about avoiding excessive effort that only wears us down, About
Speaker 1: the value of gentleness in a world that glorifies brute force,
Speaker 1: About how what seems weak is often the most resilient.
Speaker 1: The bamboo bends in the storm while the rigid oak breaks.
Speaker 1: And when you read these words today, they don't sound
Speaker 1: like ancient philosophy. They sound like an urgent warning for
Speaker 1: a world that has become sick from wanting so much,
Speaker 1: from forcing so much. One of the central points of
Speaker 1: Taoism is the power of detachment, and this goes against
Speaker 1: everything you were taught to value since you were born,
Speaker 1: since the first time they told you that you needed
Speaker 1: to be somebody in life. Since childhood, we learned that
Speaker 1: more is always better, more money to spend, more success
Speaker 1: to show off, more recognition to validate our existence, more
Speaker 1: achievements to the void, more experiences to post. The idea
Speaker 1: of detaching sounds like giving up, like failure, like mediocrity,
Speaker 1: but Lautsu proposes something radically different and harder than it seems.
Speaker 1: He doesn't tell you to abandon everything and go live
Speaker 1: like a hermit in a cave. He's not proposing misery,
Speaker 1: he says something more subtle and deeper. Question the automatic
Speaker 1: way of living. Question why you want exactly what you want?
Speaker 1: Where does this desire come from? Is it really yours
Speaker 1: or was it planted there by years of advertising, of
Speaker 1: social pressure, of fear of not being enough. Question whether
Speaker 1: these desires are authentic or imported. Question whether the relentless
Speaker 1: pursuit is actually taking you somewhere worthwhile or just exhausting you,
Speaker 1: consuming you, destroying you little by little. Question whether you're
Speaker 1: living your own life or the life they told you
Speaker 1: that you should live to be considered successful. And this
Speaker 1: is perhaps the most difficult question of all, because admitting
Speaker 1: that you might be living someone else's life is terrifying.
Speaker 1: The tauta ching is, in many aspects, a devastating critique
Speaker 1: of excessive ambition. Not of healthy ambition itself, which can
Speaker 1: be positive, which can move you, which can make you grow,
Speaker 1: but of the way it consumes us entirely, of how
Speaker 1: it becomes obsession, how it transforms us into people who
Speaker 1: are never satisfied, who never feel enough no matter how
Speaker 1: much they achieve, who always think something fundamental is missing.
Speaker 1: You reach an important goal that you pursued for months
Speaker 1: or years, and instead of stopping to celebrate, even for
Speaker 1: just a day, you're already thinking about the next one,
Speaker 1: without even processing what you just accomplished. You buy something
Speaker 1: you really wanted, dreamed about for months, and a few
Speaker 1: days later, the joy has already evaporated and you already
Speaker 1: want something else. You finally get the promotion you chase
Speaker 1: so hard, and instead of relief and satisfaction, comes just
Speaker 1: more pressure, more responsibility, more internal and external demands. And
Speaker 1: in this you never truly live. You're never really present.
Speaker 1: You just constantly chase fantasies that dissolve as soon as
Speaker 1: they're reached, leaving you emptier than before. It's like trying
Speaker 1: to quench thirst by drinking salt water. The more you drink,
Speaker 1: the thirstier you get. Lautsu asks simple questions, but devastating
Speaker 1: ones when you really stop to think about them. What's
Speaker 1: more important in the end, fame or the self, material
Speaker 1: wealth or true In a piece, he's not saying in
Speaker 1: a simplistic way that fame and wealth have no value
Speaker 1: at all, that they're bad things in themselves. He's saying
Speaker 1: something much more subtle, and uncomfortable that when you literally
Speaker 1: put everything into that, when you make these external goals
Speaker 1: the complete center of your existence, the reason you wake
Speaker 1: up every day, you lose what really matters deep down.
Speaker 1: You lose yourself. You become just an empty reflection of
Speaker 1: what others expect, of what society values, of what will
Speaker 1: impress on social media. You become a shell, a walking performance,
Speaker 1: and he goes far beyond that initial observation. Whoever clings
Speaker 1: too much, whoever places all their sense of worth in
Speaker 1: external and changeable things, suffers much more when they inevitably
Speaker 1: change or disappear, and they always change, always disappear, because
Speaker 1: fame and money are completely outside are real control, no
Speaker 1: matter how much we pretend otherwise. You can work hard,
Speaker 1: try your absolute best every day, do absolutely everything right,
Speaker 1: follow all the rules of the game, and still not
Speaker 1: achieve what you want. The market can change overnight, the
Speaker 1: economy can collapse. Luck may simply not be on your side.
Speaker 1: Someone more talented or more connected might show up. And
Speaker 1: even if you manage to achieve everything you dreamed of,
Speaker 1: even if you get exactly where you wanted, you can
Speaker 1: lose absolutely everything in a second. An unexpected financial crisis
Speaker 1: an illness that takes you out of the game, a
Speaker 1: scandal real or invented, a market shift nobody predicted, and
Speaker 1: everything crumbles. Everything you thought was your identity simply disappears.
Speaker 1: Modern society actively glorifies these self destructive excesses, enthusiastically celebrates
Speaker 1: those who literally sacrifice everything for their career, who sleep
Speaker 1: only three hours a night for years on end, who
Speaker 1: are always too busy for anything that really matters, always producing,
Speaker 1: always fighting, always on the edge of collapse. But nobody
Speaker 1: openly talks about the devastating price of all this. Nobody
Speaker 1: talks about the completely sleepless nights staring at the ceiling,
Speaker 1: unable to turn off the mind, About the constant anxiety
Speaker 1: that corrodes from within like acid day after day, About
Speaker 1: the deep and inexplicable emptiness that come right after the
Speaker 1: big achievement that was supposed to complete you. Nobody talks
Speaker 1: about the important relationships that silently crumble because you no
Speaker 1: longer have time or emotional energy to be truly present
Speaker 1: with those you love. Nobody talks about the physical and
Speaker 1: mental health that slowly goes away day after day because
Speaker 1: you literally never stop, never rest, never allow yourself to
Speaker 1: be human and vulnerable, and you look honestly at all this,
Speaker 1: at this infinite treadmill, where the finish line always moves
Speaker 1: further ahead, always just a little out of reach, and
Speaker 1: you need to ask yourself, with brutal honesty, is it
Speaker 1: really worth it? But you can't get off the treadmill
Speaker 1: because stopping seems impossible, seems like social and professional suicide,
Speaker 1: because everyone around you is in this same frantic acceleration,
Speaker 1: faster and faster, more and more intense, and you have
Speaker 1: a deep and visceral fear of falling behind, of being
Speaker 1: left behind, of not mattering anymore, of becoming irrelevant. The
Speaker 1: central question here isn't simply whether money is important or not.
Speaker 1: Of course it's important. Nobody's denying that basic reality. We
Speaker 1: live in a capitalist world where it's absolutely necessary to survive,
Speaker 1: to have a minimum of dignity, to not go without.
Speaker 1: But Lautsu is pointing to something much bigger and more
Speaker 1: fundamental than this superficial discussion about finances. Money is useful,
Speaker 1: it's important for certain practical and concrete things, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't guarantee how to truly be happy. You know this,
Speaker 1: deep down. Everyone knows this. When they stop to think honestly.
Speaker 1: But still even knowing this obvious truth, we continue acting
Speaker 1: every day as if the next promotion, the next salary rays,
Speaker 1: the next more expensive car, the next more luxurious trip,
Speaker 1: the next more impressive purchase, would finally truly complete us,
Speaker 1: would fill this emptiness. We feel as if there were
Speaker 1: a magical and specific amount of money or status that,
Speaker 1: once reached, would bring eternal peace and permanent satisfaction, as
Speaker 1: if you could literally buy tranquility in a store. Real
Speaker 1: lasting happiness doesn't depend on external and changeable factors. It
Speaker 1: comes from within, from how you relate internally to the world,
Speaker 1: to your expectations, to yourself, to life itself. And this
Speaker 1: sounds like a cheap self help book cliche, sounds like
Speaker 1: a generic phrase on an office wall, But it's a
Speaker 1: profound and difficult truth that we actively avoid facing head
Speaker 1: on because facing this truth means total responsibility. It means
Speaker 1: you can no longer blame external circumstances. And that's scary,
Speaker 1: because it's infinitely easier and more comfortable to believe that
Speaker 1: the problem is external, that you just need more of
Speaker 1: something out there, than to admit the uncomfortable truth that
Speaker 1: maybe you've been looking in the completely wrong place all along,
Speaker 1: chasing things that will never truly satisfy you. True and
Speaker 1: lasting satisfaction isn't having absolutely everything you want. It's precisely
Speaker 1: the opposite of that. It's the absence of constant lack.
Speaker 1: It's not feeling like something fundamental and essential is always
Speaker 1: missing for you to be complete. It's being genuinely okay
Speaker 1: with less than you could have. It's realizing, truly deeply
Speaker 1: realizing that you don't need much to live a good, meaningful,
Speaker 1: peaceful life. It's viscerally understanding that the race for more,
Speaker 1: always more, never naturally ends on its own, because the
Speaker 1: human brain quickly adapts to any material improvement. It's an
Speaker 1: evolutionary mechanism. You get something you really wanted, feel a
Speaker 1: momentary an intense joy, and soon, in a matter of
Speaker 1: just a few days or weeks at most, you return
Speaker 1: exactly to the previous emotional state, to the same level
Speaker 1: of satisfaction you had before. It's what psychologists call hedonic adaptation.
Speaker 1: It's scientific, it's proven. And then you need something even bigger,
Speaker 1: even more impressive, even more rare and special to feel
Speaker 1: the same intensity of temporary joy. It's a literally endless cycle,
Speaker 1: a treadmill that never stops moving, that only accelerates. Lautsou
Speaker 1: wrote something profoundly revolutionary more than two thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: something that completely challenges the logic of the modern world.
Speaker 1: When you finally truly realize that nothing is really missing,
Speaker 1: that you already have enough, the entire world begins to
Speaker 1: belong to you in a way that no material possession
Speaker 1: could ever provide. And this is profoundly radical because it
Speaker 1: means that true freedom, the kind that really matters and lasts,
Speaker 1: doesn't come from accumulating and having more and more things,
Speaker 1: more achievements, more recognition. It comes from needing less and less,
Speaker 1: from not being dependent on these things to feel complete.
Speaker 1: That the peace you desperately seek isn't in the next
Speaker 1: achievement out there, always a step ahead. It's in stopping
Speaker 1: feeling like something essential is missing in here. And it's
Speaker 1: here that L'autsu's wisdom doesn't offer an alternative path, but
Speaker 1: a path back back to basics, to the essential, to
Speaker 1: what we should never have abandoned, back to voluntary simplicity
Speaker 1: as a form of freedom. The excess of options is
Speaker 1: another specifically modern poison that we barely notice because it's
Speaker 1: so normalized in our hyper connected daily lives. You genuinely
Speaker 1: think that having more available choices is always better, is
Speaker 1: necessarily a sign of freedom, of progress, of a life
Speaker 1: rich in possibilities. But in the real practice of everyday life,
Speaker 1: it only generates much more paralyzing anxiety, more chronic indecision,
Speaker 1: more constant dissatisfaction with whatever choice you eventually make. More
Speaker 1: possible paths necessarily means more endless comparisons to make you
Speaker 1: look at all all the possibilities that exist, at all
Speaker 1: the potential futures, and think obsessively what if I choose wrong?
Speaker 1: What if I miss the best possible option among all these?
Speaker 1: What if there's something even better that I'm not seeing,
Speaker 1: that I don't know about? And in all this, in
Speaker 1: this analytical paralysis, you simply freeze. You're completely stuck. You
Speaker 1: can't decide because any decision seems to carry the terrible
Speaker 1: weight of all the other possibilities you're leaving behind. Or
Speaker 1: worse yet, you finally choose something after much mental effort,
Speaker 1: and spend literally the rest of the time thinking about
Speaker 1: what could have been different, about the alternative choice that
Speaker 1: might have been better about the opportunity you may be
Speaker 1: let pass forever. This happens with absolutely everything in modern
Speaker 1: hyperconnected life. Choosing a career has become a true existential
Speaker 1: nightmare because there are infinite possibilities. Choosing a romantic relationship
Speaker 1: when there are literally millions of people available on a
Speaker 1: simple phone app just a finger swipe away. Even choosing
Speaker 1: what to eat for lunch on a delivery app with
Speaker 1: hundreds of options has become a real source of stress
Speaker 1: and waste of time. And in this the simple becomes
Speaker 1: something too rare, almost impossible to find and maintain. You
Speaker 1: can no longer just sit on a park bench and
Speaker 1: do absolutely nothing without feeling deeply guilty unproductive. You need
Speaker 1: to always be producing something measurable, learning some new and
Speaker 1: useful skill, growing in some clear and visible way, because
Speaker 1: empty time, time without production has automatically become wasted time
Speaker 1: in everyone's collective head, and you know this is slowly
Speaker 1: killing you. Fierce competition has become the philosophical foundation of
Speaker 1: everything we do, and this connects directly with this excess
Speaker 1: of options and this constant acceleration we experience since elementary school,
Speaker 1: since very young, you learn that you necesscessarily need to
Speaker 1: be better than others, that the world is fundamentally a
Speaker 1: cruel game, where if someone wins something, another necessarily loses
Speaker 1: exactly the same thing, and this creates an unhealthy culture
Speaker 1: of comparison that literally never stops. You no longer measure
Speaker 1: yourself internally by what you really are, by what you
Speaker 1: truly feel, by what you genuinely value. You measure yourself
Speaker 1: exclusively by what you have in direct relation to others,
Speaker 1: by your relative position in this infinite social hierarchy. Individual
Speaker 1: talent and performance become the only thing that really matters
Speaker 1: and defines your worth in the work environment. You compete
Speaker 1: fiercely for promotions, for recognition, for salary. On omnipresent social media,
Speaker 1: you compete desperately for attention, for likes, for followers, for views.
Speaker 1: Even in the closest friendships, you inevitably catch yourself comparing lives, achievements, experiences.
Speaker 1: The individual ego is always above the common good that
Speaker 1: could unite. People ostentatiously display what they have, not for
Speaker 1: the genuine pleasure of sharing, but specifically to provoke envy,
Speaker 1: to show unequivocally that they're winning this competition that never ends,
Speaker 1: and you completely enter this destructive game without even realizing
Speaker 1: your playing. You buy things you don't truly need. You
Speaker 1: live a life that's not authentically yours. You pursue goals
Speaker 1: that aren't even truly yours when you analyze honestly, or
Speaker 1: just to not seem like you've fallen behind. And we
Speaker 1: continue in this collective frenzy. But loud Sue proposes the
Speaker 1: complete and radical opposite of all this, voluntary simplicity as
Speaker 1: a real path to lasting inner piece. And simplicity here
Speaker 1: doesn't mean material poverty or force deprivation at all. It
Speaker 1: means true and deep freedom, freedom of choice, freedom to be,
Speaker 1: freedom to exist without the crushing weight of infinite expectations.
Speaker 1: The more material possessions you accumulate throughout life, the more
Speaker 1: constant worries you inevitably carry. Each thing you own, each
Speaker 1: object you call yours, is necessarily something you need to
Speaker 1: carefully care for, protect from threats, keep in good condition.
Speaker 1: And this invisible weight is much greater than you imagine.
Speaker 1: Fewer insatiable desires mathematically mean less chronic stress, because you're
Speaker 1: no longer tied to an infinite cycle of wanting and
Speaker 1: never having enough. What if you simply didn't need to
Speaker 1: obsessively optimize yourself all the time. What if you could
Speaker 1: wake up in the morning without an endless list of
Speaker 1: urgent goals to accomplish. What if you genuinely accepted not
Speaker 1: being exceptional among billions Because the naked truth is that
Speaker 1: most of us simply won't be exceptional, and surprisingly that's okay.
Speaker 1: The social pressure to be extraordinary is deeply suffocating. Everyone
Speaker 1: desperately wants to be special, unique, unforgettable, but by simple
Speaker 1: mathematical definition, not everyone can really be. It's logically impossible
Speaker 1: for everyone to be exceptional at the same time, and
Speaker 1: the serene tranquility of a truly simple life isn't a
Speaker 1: sign of weakness or cowardly surrender. It's profound, accumulated wisdom.
Speaker 1: It's understanding clearly that you don't need to be at
Speaker 1: the unstable top of everything to genuinely live well. That
Speaker 1: you can have a good life, rich in meaning, deeply satisfying,
Speaker 1: without needing to fiercely compete with the entire world, without
Speaker 1: needing to prove your worth to anyone. Constant effort without
Speaker 1: pauses is another serious problem that Lautsu addresses directly and
Speaker 1: without beating around the bush. The dominant modern idea is
Speaker 1: absolutely clear and hammered into our heads from early on.
Speaker 1: The more you relentlessly try, the more you necessarily achieve.
Speaker 1: In the end, the more you work to exhaustion, the
Speaker 1: more you deservedly deserve rewards. But this simply isn't true
Speaker 1: in the real practice of life. Effort without conscious direction,
Speaker 1: without clear purpose, without real awareness of the objective, is
Speaker 1: just pure wear and tear. It's actively destroying yourself for
Speaker 1: nothing significant, and sometimes many times, actually the best thing
Speaker 1: you really can do is simply stop desperately swimming against
Speaker 1: the powerful current. Let the immense river naturally carry you.
Speaker 1: Trust the flow. This is precisely the fundamental idea of
Speaker 1: Wu Weei, the famous Taoist non doing, one of the
Speaker 1: most profoundly misunderstood concepts of all of Taoism. It's not
Speaker 1: about passive laziness. It's not about doing nothing and expecting miracles.
Speaker 1: It's about something much more subtle, always acting in deep
Speaker 1: harmony with the universe, with the natural flow of things,
Speaker 1: instead of brutally forcing everything. It's about honestly recognizing when
Speaker 1: effort is being genuinely productive, when it's really taking you
Speaker 1: somewhere worthwhile, and when it's just completely exhausting you, destroying
Speaker 1: you from the inside little by little. Because excessive misdirected
Speaker 1: effort invariably generates deep instability. You're constantly tense, perpetually anxious,
Speaker 1: always on the imminent verge of total collapse. And that's
Speaker 1: not truly living, it's surviving on automatic mode. Lautsou writes,
Speaker 1: whoever stands on tiptoe cannot sustain themselves. And this image
Speaker 1: is powerful. The top is unstable, it's competitive. You need
Speaker 1: to fight all the time to stay there, fight against
Speaker 1: everyone who wants to take your place, and there's always
Speaker 1: someone trying to knock you down. The lower position is firm,
Speaker 1: it's peaceful, fewer enemies, less effort, more stability. And this
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you can't grow or achieve things. It means
Speaker 1: you don't need to always be at the limit, always
Speaker 1: proving something, always in war mode. You can simply be.
Speaker 1: You can exist without justifying your existence all the time.
Speaker 1: Haste is another trap. Whoever rushes doesn't go far. You
Speaker 1: know this when you think calmly, but the culture of
Speaker 1: everything now makes you believe it should be different. Multitasking
Speaker 1: has become virtue a sign of competence, even though all
Speaker 1: research shows it's the enemy of depth, of quality, of
Speaker 1: real creativity. You do several things at the same time,
Speaker 1: and none of them well. Promises of quick success are everywhere.
Speaker 1: Courses that promise transformation in six weeks, schemes that guarantee
Speaker 1: instant wealth, diets that promise impossible results in record time,
Speaker 1: and you know it's a lie. The rational part knows,
Speaker 1: but a part of you wants to believe because the
Speaker 1: alternative is harder. It's accepting that good things take time,
Speaker 1: that you need to have patience, that there's no shortcut
Speaker 1: to what's really worthwhile, and patience is difficult in a
Speaker 1: world that values speed above all. But patience, balance and
Speaker 1: depth of the foundation of solid success, of a life
Speaker 1: that doesn't crumble at the first obstacle, and this takes time.
Speaker 1: Time is exactly what nobody wants to invest anymore. Being
Speaker 1: busy has become the maximum virtue. You ask someone how
Speaker 1: they are and the answer is always the same, busy,
Speaker 1: very busy, As if this were a sign of importance,
Speaker 1: of relevance. Showing work has become more important than producing
Speaker 1: something meaningful. You post about how much you're working about
Speaker 1: how you're tired but don't give up. And this receives applause,
Speaker 1: receives admiration, but nobody talks about how what really matters
Speaker 1: doesn't generate likes, doesn't attract attention, but it builds something lasting,
Speaker 1: It builds a life that's worthwhile. Status has become more
Speaker 1: important than substance. You worry more about appearance than reality,
Speaker 1: about what things seem to be than what they really are.
Speaker 1: Fear of seeming insufficient dominates everything. You make decisions based
Speaker 1: not on what you want, but on how it will
Speaker 1: look to others. And Laotsou writes, whoever tries to outshine
Speaker 1: others extinguishes their own light, because when you're so focused
Speaker 1: on being seen, on being admired, you lose what really matters.
Speaker 1: You transform into a performance, and deep down you know
Speaker 1: this is empty. Before the universe, we are insignificant. And
Speaker 1: this isn't depressing. It's liberating because it means you don't
Speaker 1: need to carry the weight of being the center of everything.
Speaker 1: You don't need to be extraordinary to justify your existence.
Speaker 1: You can simply be human, small, limited, and that's okay.
Speaker 1: The obsession with control comes from this fear, fear of
Speaker 1: not being enough, of not mattering, of being forgotten. So
Speaker 1: we try to control everything, but in this we lose
Speaker 1: life itself. We try to control the world and ourselves
Speaker 1: all the time. We seek security through money, surveillance, approval.
Speaker 1: But none of this is really controllable. You can do
Speaker 1: everything right, follow all the rules, plan every detail, and
Speaker 1: things can still go wrong. And the more you try
Speaker 1: to control, the more you suffer, because you're fighting against
Speaker 1: the very nature of life. Life is uncertain, It always
Speaker 1: has been, and it always will be, no matter how
Speaker 1: much you plan, how much you prepare. But modernity has
Speaker 1: sold us an illusion, the illusion that we can eliminate
Speaker 1: this uncertainty, that if we work hard enough, will have
Speaker 1: total control. We'll be able to predict everything, avoid all suffering,
Speaker 1: guarantee all happiness. And this is a lie, a cruel
Speaker 1: lie that leaves us exhausted, anxious, always waiting for the
Speaker 1: next disaster. Lautsu's final invitation is simple but radical. The
Speaker 1: world cannot be dominated. The Tao doesn't respond to control,
Speaker 1: to force, to manipulation. Accepting uncertainty, accepting that you don't
Speaker 1: control almost anything, reduces suffering. This doesn't mean you should
Speaker 1: give up on everything. It's not nihilism, it's not resignation.
Speaker 1: It means you focus on what you can control and
Speaker 1: what can you control your response to chaos. You're in
Speaker 1: a peace your actions, your choices, your values. You can't
Speaker 1: control whether you'll get the job, whether the person will
Speaker 1: love you, whether the project will work out, but you
Speaker 1: can control how you deal with it. You can choose
Speaker 1: not to destroy yourself in the process. You can choose
Speaker 1: to preserve your peace even when everything around you is
Speaker 1: on fire. You can choose to be present, to be alive,
Speaker 1: to be at peace even in the middle of the storm.
Speaker 1: Letting the world be what it is isn't resignation. It's wisdom.
Speaker 1: It's understanding that life flows with or without you, with
Speaker 1: or without your approval, and that you can choose to
Speaker 1: flo go along, dance with uncertainty, or weigh yourself out
Speaker 1: trying to go against it, trying to force, trying to dominate.
Speaker 1: And maybe this is the most important lesson, because in
Speaker 1: the end, peace doesn't come from conquering everything, from having everything,
Speaker 1: from controlling everything. It comes from realizing that you don't
Speaker 1: need to, that you're already enough, that life, with all
Speaker 1: its uncertainty, its pain, its beauty is already enough, and
Speaker 1: that maybe the problem was never the world out there,
Speaker 1: but the way you chose to relate to it. Maybe
Speaker 1: the greatest wisdom isn't learning to conquer the world, but
Speaker 1: unlearning the need to conquer it. Maybe the most radical
Speaker 1: freedom is realizing that you're already free. You just need
Speaker 1: to stop chasing freedom.