She only came up with two items, both revisiting places she had lived in and loved, upstate New York in the fall and Washington DC in the spring. Ron and Joan, lifelong world travelers, told her she didn’t get the concept.  “You’re supposed to put down new places, new experiences, things you’d really like to do but never got around to.” June stayed firm. “I’ve done lots of interesting things,” she said. “Now I’m only interested in things that have meaning for me.”

Living people are soft and tender
Corpses are hard and stiff
The living grass, the trees, are soft and pliant
Dead they’re dry and brittle

So hardness and stiffness go with death
Tenderness, softness go with life

And the hard sword fails
The stiff tree is felled
The hard and great go under
The soft and weak stay up.

-Tao Te Ching Chapter 76

Is this strange idea the way the world really works? Though it’s a comforting thought for those of us who aren’t “hard and great,” it often seems the hardest of people are ruling, while the soft are ground underfoot. But lately I’ve seen that people who seem beaten down and hopeless can indeed prevail, if they are flexible and resilient.  They may suffer for years or generations, but they stay up, even triumph.

But lately I’m seeing that this may be the most important advice I’ll ever receive. Happiness and peace seem to depend on stepping back from our thoughts, realizing they are just one view of the world, and frequently a wrong one, so not taking them too seriously. Without attaching to my thoughts, the world  seems a much friendlier place. Apparently, other people have even more healing experiences. Here are a few of them…

At first I didn’t like this story.  Is it about how shallow women can be, how easily they can forget their families if given a warm bed and good food? But I missed the point. Now I see it’s a parable about how the things we fear most can turn into positives.  Even our worst nightmares can redeem us.

So how come this chimp, threatened by leopards, searching for food in an endless “struggle for survival,” can stop to appreciate nature’s beauty, and we don’t? Well, according to a great book I just finished, Pleasurable Kingdom by Jonathan Balcombe, that’s what animals do. They play; they relax; they may even love. They enjoy life.   The endless struggle for survival is real, but it’s far from their whole story.

Eventually the strain of fighting gravity wore it down, as hard lives will do, and it became infected with no less than three fungi or molds. It had white spots, gray patches and black growths on every leaf. When I took some leaves to the nursery for diagnosis, the staff said, “don’t bring those things in here!  They’ll infect our whole stock!”  They sold me some antifungal spray, but advised me to throw out this plant to protect the others.

Gandhi was right, because our emotions, actions, and thoughts spread to others like waves in a still sea. Sometimes, this effect can work at great distances in time and space, and it can be for good or ill.  My partner Aisha used to work at a day treatment center for emotionally disturbed children in San Francisco. One afternoon, the center’s staff meeting was completely disrupted by a family’s presence, even though they weren’t physically there.