Make Yourself Different
February 6, 2010
The I Ching means the Book of Changes. Usually, we think of the outside change of circumstance. But it also means internal change, the change of our personality.
Are we fixed? Are we supposed to stay exactly as we are? No, we are supposed to change and in fact we all do each day. Sometimes it’s aging. Sometimes it’s the scar of a tragic circumstance. Sometimes it’s learning. But we change every day.
Just as the Daoist way is to manage outside change, it is the Daoist way to manage inside change. It’s the Daoist way to embrace change.
Today, I heard from someone who hasn’t had contact with me for about twenty years. He wrote to me, but he remembered me as I was twenty years ago. I’m not that way any more.
We all have to change. We all need to change. And we should not be held back by anyone’s memories or expectations of us. In Hexagram 42, Increase, the Image says: “The noble one sees perfection and shifts to fit its pattern, and corrects his own faults.”
