Collectively, I find that women are UNABLE to go on as we once did. Something happened in the last couple of years where those of us who were perfect US citizens waking at 5 am, gym, arrive at work before everyone else, work the latest, bed, rise and do it again, weekends spent prepping for the week ahead are just no longer... capable of that. It's not because there's something wrong or defective with us. It's not that we're depressed, it's just that that we're not capable of molding ourselves to that way of life anymore.
So many of us are completely uninterested in the things we were once interested in. Many people have almost entirely lost their desire to socialize. At least in the same way that we used to. Many women like myself find that nothing feels better than just lying in bed and.... doing nothing. Just... nothing. We don't want to do all the hair and makeup and outfits anymore. We don't want to expend all the energy to socialize and keep up with the social circles anymore.
Life isn't about work and being productive anymore. People want less, not more.
But we're not sure how to not live the hustle lifestyle. It's all we know. We've had it shoved down our throats since we were tiny children. We're trained in the way of not listening to ourselves, not caring for ourselves, looking outside ourselves for happiness, validation, and all the answers. Being productive is the only way to live. Be productive every day. If you're not being productive, you're wasting your time and ultimately your life.
And it just didn't work, and it's just not working. And it's like collectively our bodies and our psyches are just saying no. Stop. And while we stop, we're constantly being tugged at by our own conditioned minds protesting that life is too stressful to stop and that if we stop, we just might literally die. We could end up homeless. And this is the scary truth. But something deep in us knows that this is not the way. There's another way. And it calls us. It's completely unfamiliar. We can't imagine how we'll stay alive (or at least not be homeless or starving) without hustling and living stressed.
When I drive I see exclusively stressed out drivers. Everyone's freaking out. I'm not stressed. I'm relaxed. I'm driving somewhere I don't dread, I'm not in a rush, and I'm enjoying the drive there. I'm driving calmly, going a safe speed limit, not speeding around bikers when there's a curve in the road ahead. And people lose their minds when they're behind me. They're making big, upset gestures and twisting their faces. If you're not driving stressed, you're inconveniencing everyone. It's totally irrational. And in the last two years that I've been learning to relax, completely irrational is how I see most people. They're completely insane: totally disconnected from their natures and living in one of two modes: totally frazzled, or numbing themselves from being completely frazzled.
I'm simply exhausted from living nearly four decades frazzled. I refuse to live that way anymore. I won't do it for drivers behind me, I won't do it for anyone or anything. It's not worth it.
Taoism has a philosophy of doing non-doing. When we're taking our action, performing our duties, we do them in an alert, present, meditative, relaxed manner. No efforting. In doing "non-doing," we stay in harmony with the Tao. The Tao means "The Way" which I've come to know means simply the way of life. Life has a flow and an energy. It's moving like a river, and we have to be in the flow with it lest we spend our lives screaming and kicking upstream which will beat us up all along the way. Many good Americans live their whole entire lives like that. In fact, you could even say that's the valiant American way.
When we're learning to relax and we're unraveling ourselves from the insane American lifestyle that very literally separates us from our own natures and from the very flow of life, this is what we're learning. We're learning to live in harmony with the Tao, with life, with the universe.
What if what money- which is really just energy- is about is being in harmony with Tao, with life? We imagine that primal humans probably lived in harmony with life just as a squirrel or a bird do. What if- even though it's money and not berries or game that we need to survive - we can still be in that flow with nature? What if money comes to us more readily when we're in the flow of life and not struggling against it by the grit of our teeth?