Stop Fighting the Current

I used to believe that if I wasn’t exhausted, I wasn’t trying hard enough. I treated life like a wall I had to break through. If the commute was slow, I gripped the wheel tighter. If a project was stalled, I worked longer hours.

I thought control meant force.

But I realized recently that being exhausted isn’t a badge of honor. It is a check engine light. It means I am driving with the parking brake on.

I was tired because I was fighting physics.

The Book of the Way

Around 2,500 years ago, a keeper of the imperial archives in ancient China named Lao Tzu grew tired of the moral decay in society. Legend says that before he left civilization to live in the mountains, a guard asked him to write down his wisdom.

The result was the Tao Te Ching (The Book of the Way).

While it is often categorized as religion or mysticism, Taoism is effectively a manual on how reality works. The central concept is the Tao, which translates roughly to “The Way” or “The Current.”

Lao Tzu observed that nature never rushes, yet everything gets done. The seasons don’t struggle to change. The river doesn’t fight the rocks; it flows around them.

He argued that humans are the only creatures who constantly fight the current of reality. We try to force outcomes that aren’t ready. We try to control variables that are out of our hands.

The Art of Not Forcing

The core practice of Taoism is called Wu Wei.

This is often mistranslated as “doing nothing” or “laziness.” That is incorrect. A better translation is “effortless action” or “action without friction.”

Imagine a river flowing with massive power.

• The Amateur jumps in and tries to swim upstream. He works a hundred times harder than anyone else, but he goes nowhere. He drowns in his own effort.
• The Master jumps in and aligns his body with the current. He moves a hundred times faster than the amateur, but he is using zero energy.

Wu Wei isn’t about giving up. It is about leverage. It is the refusal to spend energy on things you cannot control.

Stop Pushing Doors That Say “Pull”

I am trying to apply this to my modern life, not as a spiritual practice, but as an efficiency protocol.

When I sit in traffic, I have a choice. I can mentally scream at the cars (Swimming Upstream), which changes nothing but drains my battery. Or I can accept the delay and listen to a podcast (Aligning with the Current). I arrive at the same time, but in one scenario, I am depleted. In the other, I am fine.

When I am in an argument, my instinct is to interrupt and force my point. That is swimming upstream. Now, I try to wait for the opening. I wait for the other person to run out of breath.

I am done fighting the current. The water is stronger than me.

You have a limited amount of energy every day. You can spend it fighting reality, or you can spend it using reality.

Stop grinding your gears. Check the current before you start swimming.