I can't think of progress without also thinking of its sister, patience. Progress without patience is a battle half won. Progress -- whether from an individual, communal, or societal perspective -- is nonlinear. ⁠

Sometimes it feels like we're not moving forward at all. Sometimes it even feels like we're even going backwards. However, our desire and hastiness to better ourselves and our world can lead to more pain, frustration, anger, and suffering when we find ourselves confronted with obstacles or failures. ⁠

Have faith, take heart, and be patient with yourself and with others.

I've been thinking about love recently, and how everyone feels loved in different ways. Some enjoy receiving tokens of affection like gifts, while others crave a Not applicable bond like hugs, or maybe someone feels most valued when you spend time with them working together on a project.

Sometimes I've felt frustrated when my friends or family don't understand how I interpret love, but maybe I would do better to just appreciate their love for what it is -- imperfect though it may seem -- because any expression of love will be imperfect given the limitations of language and understanding. But it doesn't make love any less still real.⁠

Don't let love get crowded out. Negativity and despair can easily overwhelm one's ability to recognize love. At the other end, anger says there's no place for love in a fight. But love is everything.

The Tao teaches that love excludes nothing and allows for the multitude of things to exist at once. It's the starting point from which ten thousand are possible and lays the foundation for hope, which is the catalyst for action.

As Baba Ram Dass says, as long as you have a body, you must act. And if you act, you have a role to play. And the question of what role therefore becomes, how can I be an instrument of love?

I came across this poem by Bertolt Brecht, German playwright and poet who lived through both World Wars, and fearing persecution for voicing his political criticisms through theatre, fled to Southern California only to be targeted and surveilled during the McCarthy era's Second Red Scare. I can only imagine all that he saw through what he assuredly felt was an extremely dark period for his country, and still he maintains a motto, a mantra to remember that expression can and will persist. And my impression is that it will persist not in spite of, but also because of that darkness.

"Motto"
by Bertolt Brecht

In the dark times
Will there be singing?
Yes, there will be singing.
About the dark times.

So, if you find yourself concerned about what your world is going through. It bears reminding that no matter what happens. Still we sing. Be it only a whisper, be it only in your heart— Sing. Sing. Sing.

What's in our nature can't be changed. Like water that has to follow the law of gravity, flowing downward and seeking the lowest point, we're also subject to forces beyond our control.

But what could be considered a limitation also becomes an opportunity. Flowing water goes around obstacles, forging its own path rather than tackling the immovable head on. Water reaches its destination by yielding. I hope you find your way, too, despite what stands in your path.

Everyone of us has his blind spots. Everyone is mistaken -- some in many ways, some in fewer -- but life is a chance for us all to learn and make sense of things, and to unlearn and relearn and reconfigure our understanding over and over again until in some distant future, we awaken.

What makes this possible in this lifetime is confronting everyone else and their learning and sense-making and mistaken-ness. As the Buddhist saying goes, "Like potatoes rubbing together in a pot, we all get clean."