Speaker 1: Although his existence is shrouded in mystery and legend, laud
Speaker 1: Su became one of the most influential figures in Eastern philosophy.
Speaker 1: He lived in ancient China over two thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: years ago, possibly as an archivist in the Imperial court.
Speaker 1: They say that when he decided to leave civilization, a
Speaker 1: guard at the border asked him to record his wisdom
Speaker 1: before departing, and there the Tao te Ching was born,
Speaker 1: one of the most profound texts ever written about how
Speaker 1: to live. His teachings revolve around the Tao, the natural
Speaker 1: way of all things, and Wu Weei, the principle of
Speaker 1: acting without forcing. Instead of fighting against the flow of life,
Speaker 1: it's better to align ourselves with it, according to Lao Tsu,
Speaker 1: and develop an attitude of non resistance toward the external world,
Speaker 1: allowing things to happen in their own time. Look around
Speaker 1: today and see us living exactly the opposite of this,
Speaker 1: running all the time, doing ten things at once, filling
Speaker 1: every empty second, as if stopping meant losing everything. Could
Speaker 1: it be that Loudsu wasn't right all along? Speed has
Speaker 1: become a virtue. The faster you do something, the better
Speaker 1: you are. We order food and it arrives in minutes.
Speaker 1: Want to watch something and its instant search for information
Speaker 1: and it appears before you even finished typing. Everything became immediate,
Speaker 1: and somehow we started to believe that all of life
Speaker 1: should work this way, that relationships should be fast, that
Speaker 1: learning should be instantaneous, that happiness should come without delay.
Speaker 1: Hurry stopped being a means to become a lifestyle. There's
Speaker 1: something seductive about it, the feeling of control of mastery.
Speaker 1: You look at your completed list and feel like you're winning,
Speaker 1: making better use of time, living intensely. But I wonder
Speaker 1: if this intensity is real or just a well constructed illusion,
Speaker 1: because there's a huge difference between living many things and
Speaker 1: living deeply. We've turned quantity into a synonym for quality,
Speaker 1: and in the process lost what really matters. Modern culture
Speaker 1: sold us an idea speeding up improves life. Doing more
Speaker 1: is being more, and this became an unquestionable social ideal.
Speaker 1: Everyone running, everyone busy, and if you dare go slower,
Speaker 1: it's as if you're wasting your life. Society taught us
Speaker 1: to fear emptiness, silence, free time, because free time seems
Speaker 1: like wasted time. But is faster really better. I look
Speaker 1: at the people around me, and many are exhausted. They
Speaker 1: have everything that speed promised to give, but they don't
Speaker 1: have peace, they don't have presence. Life isn't being lived,
Speaker 1: just passing by too fast. And there's something deeply wrong
Speaker 1: with that, because as the promise was that if you
Speaker 1: did more, had more, achieved more, you'd be happier. But
Speaker 1: the equation doesn't add up. The more you do, the
Speaker 1: emptier you feel. The more you achieve, the farther you
Speaker 1: get from yourself. Maybe we need to question this belief
Speaker 1: that more is better, because it might be that we've
Speaker 1: been running in the wrong direction all along. It was
Speaker 1: in this context that slow living emerged, living slowly, and
Speaker 1: at first this sounds almost rebellious, as if you're going
Speaker 1: to fall behind misopportunities. But slow living isn't about giving up.
Speaker 1: It's about understanding that less can be more, choosing presence
Speaker 1: instead of hurry, meaning instead of quantity. Maybe it's about
Speaker 1: recovering something we lost, the ability to truly live and
Speaker 1: look at the irony. We need a movement, a philosophy,
Speaker 1: a pretty name to justify doing what was always natural,
Speaker 1: living at your own pace, being present, feeling things, as
Speaker 1: if this were some innovation, some modern discovery, when in reality,
Speaker 1: it's just going back to basics, going back to what
Speaker 1: always worked before we decided we needed to do everything
Speaker 1: at once, at maximum speed. And Laudsu already knew this.
Speaker 1: He saw it in water. Water doesn't fight. The rock
Speaker 1: doesn't try to force the path. It simply flows, goes around, waits,
Speaker 1: and with time, without any hurry, water shapes the hardest
Speaker 1: rock will weigh acting without forcing. Maybe this is the
Speaker 1: lesson we most need to relearn, that you don't need
Speaker 1: to force so much. That there's a way of doing
Speaker 1: things that doesn't exhaust you, that doesn't destroy you, a
Speaker 1: way that works with the natural flow of life, not
Speaker 1: against it. But we learned the opposite. We learned that
Speaker 1: everything is a fight. That you need to fight for
Speaker 1: your spot, fight for your space, fight for your place
Speaker 1: in the sun. And then you spend your whole life
Speaker 1: fighting against time, against circumstances, against other people, against yourself,
Speaker 1: and in the end you're so tired of fighting that
Speaker 1: you completely forgot why you started fighting forgot what you
Speaker 1: were seeking forgot who you were before you became a
Speaker 1: soldier in this war that no one can win. Hurry
Speaker 1: has a hidden cost. We rarely stop to calculate it.
Speaker 1: We just feel it. The tiredness that never passes, the
Speaker 1: restlessness that becomes constant company, the feeling that it's never
Speaker 1: enough accelerated life generates superficiality. You pass through many things
Speaker 1: but don't truly touch any of them. You watch but
Speaker 1: don't absorb, You talk but don't connect, You eat but
Speaker 1: don't savor, You exist but don't inhabit. At the end
Speaker 1: of the day, you look back and can't remember almost anything,
Speaker 1: because hurry doesn't leave space for memory to form, doesn't
Speaker 1: leave time for meaning to emerge. Memory needs time to consolidate,
Speaker 1: to transform into something more than just information, to become experience,
Speaker 1: to become part of who you are. But when you're
Speaker 1: always running, there's no time for that. You accumulate moments,
Speaker 1: but none of them stick, none of them deepen, none
Speaker 1: of them become real memories. They're just flashes, fragments, loose
Speaker 1: pieces that don't form any narrative. And in the end
Speaker 1: you have the strange feeling that you lived a lot
Speaker 1: but didn't live anything. That time passed but you weren't
Speaker 1: there to see it. You live everything so fast that
Speaker 1: it seems like you didn't live anything. When you're always
Speaker 1: running to the next thing, You're never completely where you are.
Speaker 1: Your mind has already jumped to the next commitment. This
Speaker 1: destroys the capacity for attention. You lose the ability to
Speaker 1: dive deep, to completely surrender to a moment. Everything becomes fragmented,
Speaker 1: your attention divided into a thousand pieces. Is you live
Speaker 1: in a constant state of semi presence, half here, half there,
Speaker 1: never totally anywhere. And this isn't living, it's surviving at
Speaker 1: high speed. And there's a psychological price to this because
Speaker 1: your mind wasn't made to function this way. It wasn't
Speaker 1: made to jump from one thing to another in a
Speaker 1: matter of seconds, to be in ten places at once,
Speaker 1: to process a thousand pieces of information simultaneously. It needs focus,
Speaker 1: needs depth, needs time to truly understand something, to truly
Speaker 1: feel something. But you don't give it that time. You
Speaker 1: just pass, pass, pass, and it never manages to go
Speaker 1: deep into anything, always stays on the surface, always jumping,
Speaker 1: always restless. And you feel this, feel this constant restlessness,
Speaker 1: this inability to stay quiet, to be at peace, because
Speaker 1: you trained your mind to never be at peace, to
Speaker 1: always be in motion. And now, even when you want
Speaker 1: to stop it, can't You wake up already tired, sleep,
Speaker 1: still worried, carry a mental list of unfinished things that
Speaker 1: only grows, and your body feels it, your mind feels it,
Speaker 1: but you continue because stopping seems impossible, because if you stop,
Speaker 1: everything will crumble, or maybe you'll discover that much of
Speaker 1: what you thought was essential was just unnecessary weight you
Speaker 1: were carrying because someone said you should. And there's fear
Speaker 1: in this, fear of discovering you were wrong all along,
Speaker 1: that you were running in the wrong direction, that you
Speaker 1: were chasing things that don't matter. So it's easier to
Speaker 1: keep running, keep busy, keep without time to think, because
Speaker 1: if you stop, if you really stop and look at
Speaker 1: your life with honesty, you'll have to admit some things.
Speaker 1: You'll have to face some truths, and maybe you're not
Speaker 1: ready for that. Maybe that's why you never stop. When
Speaker 1: you live in a hurry, experience loses depth. That meal
Speaker 1: you a while looking at your phone, that conversation while
Speaker 1: thinking about something else, that walk, taking photos to post
Speaker 1: without really seeing what was around you. Hurry transforms everything
Speaker 1: into surface you consume but don't savor. You see, but
Speaker 1: don't observe. You hear but don't listen, and you lose
Speaker 1: the richness of details, the texture of life, the nuances
Speaker 1: that make something memorable. Because depth requires time, requires pause,
Speaker 1: and hurry doesn't allow this. It drags you to the
Speaker 1: next thing before you have a chance to feel the first.
Speaker 1: Have you noticed how you don't remember the details anymore?
Speaker 1: How everything kind of blends into an indistinct mass of
Speaker 1: passing days because you're not paying attention. Not really you're
Speaker 1: there physically, but mentally you're already gone, already at the
Speaker 1: next commitment, the next task, the next problem, and the
Speaker 1: present moment, the moment that's actually happening one you missed,
Speaker 1: pass through it without even noticing, and when you try
Speaker 1: to remember later, you won't have anything to remember because
Speaker 1: you were never really there. Hurry robbed us of the
Speaker 1: ability to appreciate, to be present, to let the experience
Speaker 1: happen at its own pace. We want everything fast, immediate pleasure,
Speaker 1: instant response results now, and when things don't come at
Speaker 1: that speed, we give up move on to the next,
Speaker 1: as if life were an infinite sequence of stimuli that
Speaker 1: need to be consumed as quickly as possible. And there's
Speaker 1: something deeply sad about this, because you're treating your life
Speaker 1: like a queue, like a to do list to be
Speaker 1: crossed off, like a menu to be consumed. You grab, consume,
Speaker 1: discard next, grab, consume, discard next, without ever really savoring anything,
Speaker 1: without ever really connecting with anything, just consuming, just passing through,
Speaker 1: just accumulating empty experiences that leave no mark. And in
Speaker 1: the end you have the feeling of having eaten a lot,
Speaker 1: but not having been nourished, of having seen a lot
Speaker 1: but not having seen anything, of having lived a lot
Speaker 1: but not having truly lived. Schopenhauer saw this a long
Speaker 1: time ago. Hurry, excessive stimuli, the constant pursuit of status,
Speaker 1: produce illusions of happiness and deepen human discomfort because the
Speaker 1: will is never satisfied. You achieve something and it already
Speaker 1: wants the next thing. You reach a goal and it
Speaker 1: already puts another one in front of you, and you
Speaker 1: run and run and never get anywhere, because the destination
Speaker 1: always moves. He saw humanity trapped in this endless cycle.
Speaker 1: The will pushes us from one desire to another, never
Speaker 1: letting us be at peace, and modern life only made
Speaker 1: this worse. Multiplied desire, intensified urgency, accelerated the cycle. Now
Speaker 1: you don't just want more, you want more faster, and
Speaker 1: when you get it, there's not even time to savor
Speaker 1: the achievement because you're already looking at the next one.
Speaker 1: He talked about two types of pleasure, the pleasures of
Speaker 1: the will, which are immediate, intense, but fleeting. You feel them,
Speaker 1: but they don't last. You need more, and the pleasures
Speaker 1: of the intellect, of contemplation, of art of reflection. These
Speaker 1: are slower, they require time, but they're deeper, more lasting,
Speaker 1: more meaningful. They don't leave you agitated, they leave you
Speaker 1: at peace. Maybe we're chasing the wrong pleasures. We want
Speaker 1: everything fast, intense, now, and this keeps us in a
Speaker 1: constant state of agitation. Of Displeasures that truly nourish us
Speaker 1: require deceleration, require you to stop, to surrender, to remain
Speaker 1: long enough for something to happen inside you. L'autsu said
Speaker 1: something profound about this. When you're in a hurry, you
Speaker 1: never arrive because hurry isn't speed, its agitation, its movement
Speaker 1: without direction, its effort without purpose. You're doing a lot,
Speaker 1: but you're not accomplishing anything. The more you run the
Speaker 1: farther you get from where you really want to be,
Speaker 1: because the destination isn't up ahead. The destination is here,
Speaker 1: it's now. It's in this moment that you're letting pass
Speaker 1: because you're too busy running to the next one. Epicurus
Speaker 1: already understood this a long time ago. He talked about pleasure,
Speaker 1: but not the way most people imagine. It wasn't about
Speaker 1: seeking constant stimuli, about accumulating experiences, about chasing everything that
Speaker 1: gives you a quick hit of satisfaction. Epicurus talked about
Speaker 1: static pleasure, that pleasure that comes from the absence of pain,
Speaker 1: from the satisfaction of simple desires, from the tranquility of
Speaker 1: not needing much to be well. And this changes everything
Speaker 1: because if happiness is in simple things, you don't need
Speaker 1: to run, don't need to accumulate, don't need to do
Speaker 1: more and more to feel complete. His philosophy was radical
Speaker 1: for his time, and it continues to be radical today
Speaker 1: because he was saying that you don't need what society
Speaker 1: says you need, that you can be happy with less,
Speaker 1: much less, and that this happiness is more lasting, more stable,
Speaker 1: more real than anything. The frantic pursuit of more can
Speaker 1: give you. He divided desires into three categories. The natural
Speaker 1: and necessary ones like simple food, shelter, true friendships. These
Speaker 1: are easy to satisfy and bring lasting tranquility. Then came
Speaker 1: the natural but not necessary ones like luxurious food, extra comforts.
Speaker 1: These can bring pleasure, but they're not essential, and pursuing
Speaker 1: them can bring more restlessness than peace. And lastly, the
Speaker 1: vain desires like fame, excessive wealth, status. These are never
Speaker 1: completely satisfied and only generate more tension. When you understand this,
Speaker 1: you realize that most of what we run after is
Speaker 1: in that last category, chasing things that will never truly fulfill.
Speaker 1: And while you chase, you ignore the things that could
Speaker 1: actually satisfy you, the simple things, the things that were
Speaker 1: always within your reach but that you never had time
Speaker 1: to notice because you were too busy running after the impossible.
Speaker 1: The less you depend on intense and immediate pleasures, the
Speaker 1: less pressure you feel, less need to run because you're
Speaker 1: no longer at the mercy of your infinite wants. You
Speaker 1: learn to find satisfaction in the simple, in the essential,
Speaker 1: and this frees you, gives you time, gives you space,
Speaker 1: allows you to breathe. Thoah also understood this when he
Speaker 1: went to live in the forest. It wasn't because he
Speaker 1: was running from life. It was because he was seeking
Speaker 1: to truly live, to live deliberately, as he said, he
Speaker 1: wanted to extract from life only what was essential, cut
Speaker 1: away everything that was superfluous, distraction, noise, and discover what
Speaker 1: really mattered. He realized that modern society was building a
Speaker 1: prison of obligations, of possessions, of expectations, and that most
Speaker 1: people lived running to keep all of this functioning, but
Speaker 1: never had time to actually live. He didn't want that.
Speaker 1: He wanted simplicity, time, presence. He went to the woods
Speaker 1: because he wanted to suck all the marrow out of life.
Speaker 1: He wanted to live deeply. He wanted to face only
Speaker 1: the essential facts of existence and see if he couldn't
Speaker 1: learn what it had to teach, so as not to
Speaker 1: discover at the moment of death that he hadn't lived.
Speaker 1: Because life is so precious that he didn't want to
Speaker 1: live what wasn't life. Didn't want designation when there could
Speaker 1: be life Thereau talked about going to the woods because
Speaker 1: he wanted to live with purpose, didn't want to reach
Speaker 1: the end of life and discover he hadn't lived that.
Speaker 1: He had spent his days doing things that didn't matter,
Speaker 1: following rules that made no sense, running after goals that
Speaker 1: weren't really his. How many of us are doing exactly this,
Speaker 1: living someone else's life, following the script that society wrote,
Speaker 1: running because everyone runs, and forgetting to ask if this
Speaker 1: is what we really want? The simple life that Thereau
Speaker 1: defended wasn't about deprivation. It was about freedom, freedom from
Speaker 1: not needing so many things, from not depending on so much,
Speaker 1: from not being tied to infinite obligations. When you simplify,
Speaker 1: you gain time, You gain clarity, You gain the possibility
Speaker 1: of making real choices. Because complexity traps, excess traps speed traps,
Speaker 1: and simplicity liberates. Gives you space to breathe, to think,
Speaker 1: to feel, to finally discover who you are when no
Speaker 1: one is watching, when no expectation is weighing on you,
Speaker 1: when it's just you and life face to face. Have
Speaker 1: you noticed how you're always trying to anticipate everything, as
Speaker 1: if life were a marathon and you had to get
Speaker 1: ahead of everyone. But where are you running to? I
Speaker 1: look around and see people getting there to the place
Speaker 1: they thought they wanted to reach and discovering it wasn't
Speaker 1: quite that, that the race wasn't worth it. And then
Speaker 1: what Either you admit you were chasing the wrong thing,
Speaker 1: or you invent a new race so you don't have
Speaker 1: to stop and face the emptiness. And that's the trap.
Speaker 1: You never arrive because the destination always moves. There's always
Speaker 1: a new goal, a new objective, a new thing to conquer,
Speaker 1: and you run and run and run, and when you
Speaker 1: finally reach something, there's no real satisfaction, just a momentary
Speaker 1: relief followed by and now what's next, And you're already
Speaker 1: running again, because stopping would mean admitting that maybe you
Speaker 1: don't know where you're going, and that's a truth too
Speaker 1: scary to face. Spending your whole life postponing life, saying
Speaker 1: that when you get there, when you achieve that, then
Speaker 1: you'll be able to relax, you'll finally be able to live.
Speaker 1: But that moment never comes because when you arrive, you're
Speaker 1: already looking at the next place, always postponing the moment
Speaker 1: of truly being here, of truly living what you have. Now.
Speaker 1: We were trained for this from childhood. You learn that
Speaker 1: value is in doing, in conquering, in being productive at
Speaker 1: no point does anyone teach you to simply be, to exist,
Speaker 1: without needing to prove anything, to be at peace with
Speaker 1: what you are, because being doesn't yield anything. Being doesn't
Speaker 1: drive the economy, so we forgot how to do it.
Speaker 1: And then you grow up thinking you need to just
Speaker 1: fire your existence, that you need to prove you deserve
Speaker 1: to be here, that you need to do do do
Speaker 1: to have value, And you spend your whole life trying
Speaker 1: to prove to whom you don't even know anymore, to
Speaker 1: your parents, to society, to yourself. But you prove, you do,
Speaker 1: you conquer, and you continue feeling it's not enough because
Speaker 1: it never is, because you're seeking validation in the wrong place.
Speaker 1: You're seeking from the outside something that can only be
Speaker 1: found from the inside. When you finally stop, you realize
Speaker 1: how difficult this is because you don't know anymore how
Speaker 1: to be with yourself, don't know what to do with silence,
Speaker 1: with free time, and this scares you, makes you feel
Speaker 1: like you're wasting time, and then you go back to
Speaker 1: running because running is more comfortable than stopping and facing
Speaker 1: everything you avoided while you were too busy. But what
Speaker 1: are you avoiding? Maybe it's yourself, the realization that you
Speaker 1: don't know anymore who you are when you're not doing anything.
Speaker 1: You spend so much time defining your value by what
Speaker 1: you do that you forgot your value doesn't depend on that.
Speaker 1: You're valuable because you exist, not because you produce, not
Speaker 1: because you conquer, simply because you exist. We're so busy
Speaker 1: making life happen that we forget to live the life
Speaker 1: that's happening. We plan the future, we worry about the future,
Speaker 1: we work for the future, We sacrifice the present for
Speaker 1: the future. But the future never arrives because when it arrives,
Speaker 1: it's the present, and you're so busy planning the next
Speaker 1: future that you don't live the present that finally arrived.
Speaker 1: So your whole life passes somewhere between the past you
Speaker 1: ruminate on and the future you anticipate, but never here,
Speaker 1: never now, never in the only moment that truly exists,
Speaker 1: in the only moment where life can truly be lived.
Speaker 1: Slowing down seems like a luxury, seems like something for
Speaker 1: people who have time, But is it really or is
Speaker 1: it just another excuse to keep running? Because slowing down
Speaker 1: doesn't mean stopping work. It means doing things differently being
Speaker 1: present while you do them, choosing what matters and letting
Speaker 1: the rest go, protecting your time and your attention as
Speaker 1: the most valuable resources you have. Everyone has the same
Speaker 1: time twenty four hours a day. The difference is in
Speaker 1: how you choose to use it. You can fill every
Speaker 1: minute with obligations or create space to breathe, to think,
Speaker 1: to feel. When you're present, you do things better with
Speaker 1: more clarity. But even if you didn't, it would still
Speaker 1: be worthwhile. Because productivity isn't the meaning of life. Living is.
Speaker 1: And there's something deeply wrong with measuring your life by
Speaker 1: your productivity, as if you were a machine, as if
Speaker 1: the value of your existence depended on how much you produce,
Speaker 1: how much you do, how much you deliver. But you're
Speaker 1: not a machine. You're a human being, and being human
Speaker 1: isn't about producing. It's about living, feeling, experiencing, connecting, growing, loving, suffering, learning, being,
Speaker 1: And none of this appears on a productivity spreadsheet. None
Speaker 1: of this counts as achievement, but it's all that really matters.
Speaker 1: We normalized tiredness. Being exhausted became a badge, being overloaded,
Speaker 1: as if this were a sign of importance. But why
Speaker 1: did exhaustion become synonymous with success. Burnout isn't a sign
Speaker 1: that you're living intensely. It's a sign that you're living unsustainably,
Speaker 1: that you're spending more than you have and you feel
Speaker 1: it in your body, but you continue because stopping seems impossible.
Speaker 1: When you start to simplify, something interesting happens, you realize
Speaker 1: you don't miss it, that those commitments that filled your
Speaker 1: schedule didn't make that much difference, that you can live
Speaker 1: with less, do less, be less productive, and be happier,
Speaker 1: more at peace, more present, because the equation doesn't add
Speaker 1: up the way society sold it. Doing more doesn't make
Speaker 1: you happier, it makes you more tired. Marcus Aurelius, who
Speaker 1: ruled one of the greatest empires in the world, understood
Speaker 1: something that most busy people don't understand. He knew that
Speaker 1: greatness isn't in doing much, it's in doing what's essential.
Speaker 1: He wrote that most of what disturbs and occupies us
Speaker 1: is unnecessary. That if you eliminate the superfluous, you gain time,
Speaker 1: you gain calm, you gain clarity. He defended doing less
Speaker 1: but doing what really matters, not dispersing in a thousand directions, focus, choose,
Speaker 1: prioritize the essential, and let the rest go. And this
Speaker 1: coming from an emperor, is specially powerful because he had
Speaker 1: more responsibilities than any of us will ever have. He
Speaker 1: ruled an empire, dealt with wars, with politics, with conspiracies,
Speaker 1: with constant threats. He had a thousand reasons to always
Speaker 1: be busy, always running, always worried, And even so he
Speaker 1: found time to write, to reflect, to be present because
Speaker 1: he understood that if he didn't do this, it didn't
Speaker 1: matter how many military victories he achieved, didn't matter how
Speaker 1: much power he accumulated, he would be losing the only
Speaker 1: thing that really mattered his own life. Eliminating the unnecessary
Speaker 1: isn't laziness. It's wisdom. It's understanding that your time is finite,
Speaker 1: that your energy is limited, that your attention is precious.
Speaker 1: If you spend all of this on things that don't matter,
Speaker 1: you won't have anything left for what really matters. It's
Speaker 1: about protecting the essential, creating space space for what nourishes you,
Speaker 1: for what transforms you, for what makes you feel alive,
Speaker 1: and the rest. The rest can go, because the rest
Speaker 1: was only keeping you busy, not making you happy. Less
Speaker 1: dispersed action more presence. That's the key. We live acting
Speaker 1: all the time, but without really being present in any
Speaker 1: of the actions, always with our head in the future,
Speaker 1: worried about what's coming, or in the past, ruminating on
Speaker 1: what passed. But never here, never now, And it's here
Speaker 1: and now that life is happening. It's here and now
Speaker 1: that you can truly live. But you're always absent, always
Speaker 1: mentally somewhere else, and when you finally arrive at that
Speaker 1: other place, you'll be thinking about the next one. So
Speaker 1: your whole life passes without ever being where you are,
Speaker 1: without ever inhabiting your own life. Laotsu observed water, how
Speaker 1: it flows, how it goes around obstacles, how it doesn't force,
Speaker 1: It follows the natural path, and with time water shapes
Speaker 1: the rock, not with force, with persistence, with patience, with flow.
Speaker 1: Wu wayh isn't passivity, it's intelligent action. It's understanding that
Speaker 1: not everything needs to be forced, That you don't need
Speaker 1: to break down doors, you can wait for them to open,
Speaker 1: follow the flow instead of swimming against it. But what
Speaker 1: does wuwe really mean? In practice? It means stopping trying
Speaker 1: to control everything. It means understanding that you can plant
Speaker 1: the seed, but you can't force the tree to grow.
Speaker 1: You water, you care, but you don't pull the plant
Speaker 1: upward trying to accelerate the process. Life is like this.
Speaker 1: There are things you can do, and there are things
Speaker 1: only time can do, and when you try to force
Speaker 1: what only time can do, you only create suffering. And
Speaker 1: there's nuance in this because it's not about being passive.
Speaker 1: It's not about doing nothing and waiting for things to
Speaker 1: fall from the sky. It's about understanding the difference between
Speaker 1: necessary action and desperate action, between productive effort an effort
Speaker 1: that only exhausts you, between working with life and fighting
Speaker 1: against it. And this difference is subtle, but when you
Speaker 1: learn to feel it, when you learn to perceive it,
Speaker 1: everything changes. Lautsu said that the sage acts without excessive effort.
Speaker 1: He doesn't stand still, but he also doesn't exhaust himself.
Speaker 1: He does what needs to be done, but does it
Speaker 1: in harmony with the moment. If it's time to act,
Speaker 1: he acts. If it's time to wait, he waits, and
Speaker 1: he doesn't fight against this, doesn't get tense wanting things
Speaker 1: to happen faster, because he understands that everything has its
Speaker 1: time and that respecting this time isn't weakness, it's wisdom.
Speaker 1: It's understanding that you're part of a larger flow, not
Speaker 1: the center of it. When you alive with this flow
Speaker 1: instead of fighting against it, everything becomes lighter. Modern life
Speaker 1: teaches you the opposite. It teaches you that you need
Speaker 1: to force, that you need to fight, that if you're
Speaker 1: not forcing, if you're not fighting, you're losing. And maybe
Speaker 1: sometimes you need to, but maybe not all the time.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're spending too much energy fighting things. You could
Speaker 1: go around, forcing situations that could resolve themselves if you
Speaker 1: gave them time. And this exhausts you because you're fighting
Speaker 1: against the current, trying to control the uncontrollable, and in
Speaker 1: the end you're so exhausted from the fight that you
Speaker 1: have no energy for anything else, not even to enjoy
Speaker 1: what you conquered, not even to live what you have,
Speaker 1: not even to be who you are. Think about how
Speaker 1: many times you tried to force a relationship that wasn't flowing,
Speaker 1: how many times you forced a conversation, forced a decision,
Speaker 1: forced a solution, and in the end all you got
Speaker 1: was more tension, more conflict, more were and afterward, when
Speaker 1: you finally let go when you stopped forcing, things resolved
Speaker 1: themselves or they didn't resolve, and you realize they didn't
Speaker 1: need to be resolved that way, that there was another path,
Speaker 1: a path you couldn't see because you were too busy
Speaker 1: forcing the path you thought was right. Wu Weei isn't
Speaker 1: about giving up. It's about choosing your battles. It's about
Speaker 1: understanding where your action is necessary and where it's just
Speaker 1: unnecessary resistance. It's about working with life instead of against it.
Speaker 1: It's about trusting that some things will resolve without you forcing.
Speaker 1: And this is difficult because we were taught that if
Speaker 1: we're not doing something, nothing will happen. But look at nature.
Speaker 1: It does everything without apparent effort. Trees grow, flowers, bloom,
Speaker 1: everything in the right time, without hurry, without force, just flow,
Speaker 1: and everything realizes itself perfectly. Laotsu said something else that
Speaker 1: the truly strong person is like water, soft, flexible, apparently fragile,
Speaker 1: but in the end, water defeats the rock because the
Speaker 1: rock is rigid, and everything that's rigid breaks, water adapts,
Speaker 1: goes around, changes form, and precisely because of this it survives.
Speaker 1: Maybe we need to learn this, stop trying to be
Speaker 1: the rock rigid, inflexible, and start being more like water, adaptable, flexible,
Speaker 1: capable of changing the path without losing the destination. Learning
Speaker 1: to trust in time, in the process, in the natural
Speaker 1: flow of life. Learning that not everything needs to happen now,
Speaker 1: that not everything can be forced, and that this doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you're standing still. It means you're flowing, working with life,
Speaker 1: not against it. And this changes everything because you stop
Speaker 1: carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders, stop
Speaker 1: forcing until you break, and you start to flow. To
Speaker 1: allow to trust. Laoutsu had another powerful observation. He said
Speaker 1: that emptiness is what makes things useful. The emptiness inside
Speaker 1: the cup is what allows you to put water in it.
Speaker 1: The emptiness inside the house is what allows you to
Speaker 1: live there. And maybe the emptiness in your schedule, the
Speaker 1: emptiness in your day, the emptiness in your mind is
Speaker 1: exactly what makes your life useful, what allows something new
Speaker 1: to enter, what creates space for you to truly live.
Speaker 1: But we're so afraid of emptiness that we fill every
Speaker 1: second and then there's no space left for anything, for
Speaker 1: any surprise, for any possibility, for any real life to happen.
Speaker 1: It's like trying to fill a cup that's already full.
Speaker 1: No matter how much you pour, nothing new enters because
Speaker 1: there's no space. And your life is like this, so full,
Speaker 1: so filled, so busy, that there's no space for anything new,
Speaker 1: for any discovery, for any transformation. You're so busy maintaining
Speaker 1: everything you already have, doing everything you already do, being
Speaker 1: everything you already are, that there's no space to become
Speaker 1: something else, to grow, to change, to evolve, And then
Speaker 1: you're stuck, not because you don't want to change, but
Speaker 1: because you don't have space for change to happen. We
Speaker 1: live running, doing a thousand things at once, accumulating experiences,
Speaker 1: and in the process we don't truly know anything. We
Speaker 1: pass through everything so fast that nothing touches, nothing transforms,
Speaker 1: It's all surface, And when we reach the end, we
Speaker 1: look back and realize we lived thousands of moments but
Speaker 1: didn't inhabit any of them because we were always running
Speaker 1: to the next one. You collect moments like someone who
Speaker 1: collects stamps, mark places visited, take photos of everything, make
Speaker 1: lists of what you've already done, and you feel this
Speaker 1: strange need to do more, to see more, to have more,
Speaker 1: as if life were a points game and you needed
Speaker 1: to maximize your score before time runs out. But life
Speaker 1: isn't about points. It's not about quantity. It's about quality,
Speaker 1: about depth, about truly being where you are, truly feeling
Speaker 1: what you're feeling, truly living what you're living. And you
Speaker 1: can't do that while running. What if life isn't about quantity.
Speaker 1: What if it's about depth? What if living well is
Speaker 1: feeling more, being more present, allowing fewer things to touch
Speaker 1: you more deeply. We confused living with doing, and now
Speaker 1: we're doing so much that we forgot to live. Slowing
Speaker 1: down is scary. When you stop, you come face to
Speaker 1: face with everything you were avoiding, the silence, the thoughts,
Speaker 1: the emotions you didn't have time to feel, the loneliness
Speaker 1: you were filling with noise, the questions you were muffling
Speaker 1: with busyness. And this hurts. That's why we run, because
Speaker 1: running is easier than stopping and looking inward. But you
Speaker 1: can't run from yourself forever. At some point you'll have
Speaker 1: to stop. And maybe it's better to stop now the
Speaker 1: way you choose, than to wait until life forces you.
Speaker 1: Because life will eventually force you, whether through a crisis,
Speaker 1: through burnout, through a collapse, through something that forces you
Speaker 1: to stop. And when that happens, it won't be on
Speaker 1: your time, it won't be your way. It will be brutal,
Speaker 1: it will be painful, it will be at the moment
Speaker 1: you least expect and least want. So maybe it's better
Speaker 1: to choose, choose to stop now, slowly, carefully, intentionally, while
Speaker 1: you still can choose, because if you don't choose, life
Speaker 1: will choose for you, and it won't ask if you're ready.
Speaker 1: When you finally slow down, when you allow life to
Speaker 1: happen at its own pace, something changes. You realize you
Speaker 1: weren't losing anything. You were gaining presence, clarity, peace. Fewer
Speaker 1: commitments doesn't mean less life. It means more life because
Speaker 1: you finally have space to live what's happening, to feel,
Speaker 1: to think, to be. And this isn't loss, it's freedom.
Speaker 1: Maybe we need to stop measuring life by how much
Speaker 1: we do and start measuring by how much we feel,
Speaker 1: by how much we're present, because in the end, what
Speaker 1: matters is if you were there when you did it,
Speaker 1: if you felt it, if you lived it. All these
Speaker 1: thinkers are saying something similar, each in their own way.
Speaker 1: Epicurus would tell you that happiness is in simple things.
Speaker 1: Thoreau would tell you that you need to live deliberately.
Speaker 1: Schopenhauer would tell you that deep pleasures are slow. Marcus
Speaker 1: Aurelius would tell you that doing less is doing better.
Speaker 1: But it's loudso who brings the deepest synthesis. He would
Speaker 1: tell you that nature doesn't hurry, yet everything gets accomplished,
Speaker 1: that forcing creates resistance, and flowing creates harmony. That you
Speaker 1: don't need to fight so much, that you can simply
Speaker 1: be as water is, as the tree is, as everything
Speaker 1: in nature is, without hurry, without excessive effort, without constant
Speaker 1: war against time and against yourself. Slow down, simplify, be present,
Speaker 1: live deeply instead of living a lot, because life isn't
Speaker 1: a race. It never was, And if you treat it
Speaker 1: like one, you'll reach the end without having truly lived anything,
Speaker 1: without having felt anything, without having been present in any moment.
Speaker 1: And Loud too, already knew this over two thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: that hurry doesn't take you anywhere. It just makes you
Speaker 1: spin in circles faster and faster until you're so dizzy
Speaker 1: you can no longer see where you're going. Life is
Speaker 1: happening now, and you can be in it or keep
Speaker 1: running while it passes by the choice has always been yours,
Speaker 1: but choose soon, because the time you have to make
Speaker 1: this choice is also passing.