June 30
Do not avoid the obstacle; go through it. What stands in your way is itself the way you have come to practise.
The Book of Five Rings (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Do not avoid the obstacle; go through it. What stands in your way is itself the way you have come to practise.
Some of the things you avoid, you know more precisely than much of what you actually do. A conversation you have been putting off for months has long since taken on a clear outline for you: the point where it could tip over, the sentence you don't want to say, the time of day at which you will certainly not call. Habits form around something like this. You become skilled at filling pauses and changing the subject in time.
That is practice too, only it is practice in something other than you think. Over time the detour stops being a detour. It is well paved by now and surprisingly comfortable.
Yet not every evasion is cowardice. Some difficulties are simply none of your business, and it was wise to go around them. It gets tricky because, from the inside, the two feel very much alike. Perhaps there is a difference all the same: what does not concern you, you forget as soon as you are past it.
The other kind turns up again, in other places and with other people, but in the same form. You recognise it from a long way off.
