chapter 17. FOLLOWING
chapter 17. FOLLOWING
on TikTok-queuing and plant processions
The text of this post has been translated from Dutch to English with DeepL. It will be manually edited and streamlined soon.
THE IMAGE: above the Lake, below the Thunder. The Lake leads, the Thunder follows. Of the eight trigrams, the Lake is the most delicate. It represents reflection, mirroring and humour, playing the role of the youngest daughter within the family. Thunder, on the other hand, represents sheer power. One thunderclap is the epitome of initiative and awakening. In the family, the Thunder takes the place of the eldest son.
In this hexagram, the Thunder is subordinate to the Lake. The Lake leads and the Thunder follows. There, that mature male virility just lets itself be taken by the hand and carried away! An older man follows a younger woman. Strength follows delicacy. A big country adapts to a small one. Power listens to vulnerability. Leadership is for the mirroring power of the Lake and the unsuspected power of water.
Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water.
Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better;
It has no equal.
The weak can overcome the strong;
The supple can overcome the stiff.
Under heaven everyone knows this,
Yet no one puts it into practice.
Tao Teh Ching 78 - vertaling Gia Fu Feng
Lake over Thunder. First of all sensitivity, only then proceeding with strength, forward or in any other direction. This is what the ideal of following looks like. Following, as you observe around you, appears in many other guises, not infrequently unrecognizable. For what will you follow? The teacher, the leader, general opinion, the conspiracy narrative, morality, anarchy, the expectations of others? You are expected to follow countless traffic rules, rules of life and rules of writing. In cooking, you neatly follow the recipe of the cookbook. In music the rules full of notes. You get well-meant but often conflicting directions to folllow. There are commandments and prohibitions, ordinances and conventions, and there are arrows. Lots and lots of arrows everywhere, trying to point you in a certain direction. Arrows that you should follow
Charlie, our little beagle, doesn’t care about arrows. She follows nothing and no one except her own nose. Who among us dares to close our eyes and rely completely on our nose? Who lets free intuition take the lead?
What if the Thunder takes the lead and the Lake must timidly follow? What if the fragile loses its voice? Then the minority sighs under the will of the majority. Then playing loses out to the rules. Thunder above and Lake below. Following then turns into being docile. In a symbolically being married off and being subordinate.
You think you are following your heart and carve your lover's name in the bark of a tree. Many years later - the infatuation has long since died out and been forgotten - the little heart with arrows has expanded a little, growing with the tree in width. Yet it is still at the same height as it was then. The tree grew towards the light, leaving the expression of having falling in love where it was.
Instead of losing yourself in a whim, you can follow your heart. Listen carefully to what the heart whispers - or screams - and act on it. And even if you are older, it is never too late to go back to childhood dreams - the finest game, the most beautiful book, an unanswered question full of fascination - and pursue them.
Who can muster the courage to be still, to listen to the dream of yesteryear and act on it? Much easier is mindlessly following what appears on your mobile - social media opinion and influencer taste. They lead you to the best and the tastiest and trigger your fomo. Sooner or later that creates TikTok queues, in front of stores with the best traditional waffles in Amsterdam - overpriced and completely unknown to the locals.
On high tide days, you see serious traffic jams on the flanks of Mount Everest as people follow each other like walking ducks to check off the next item on the bullet list.
Yes, I hear you thinking, quite frankly, there is only one narrow path to the summit of Mount Everest, so that's why all those Sunday climbers line up one after the other. Take the test and equip a diverse group of tourists with a GPS transmitter - as if they were migratory birds on the research trail. Release them in the center of Amsterdam and give them the freedom to go wherever they want. Despite the freedom given, they will stay neatly on the beaten tourist paths.
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