Tao Te Ching VIII

Highest good is like water.  Because water excels at benefiting the myriad creatures without contending with them and settles where none would like to be, it comes close to the way.

In a home it is the site that matters.

In quality of mind it is depth that matters.

In an ally it is benevolence that matters.

In speech it is good faith that matters.

In government it is order that matters.

In affairs it is ability that matters.

In action it is timeliness that matters.

It is because it does not contend that it is never at fault.

Water is not a specialist.  Construction, scholarship, alliances, oratory, politics, business, and war—dentistry, golf, web design, advertising, prostitution, poetry, trafficking, and bishopry—are.  In each specialty, there are specific attributes and forms of knowledge that are required to excel in that trade; there are, as much in the so-called anti-social trades as in the so-called proper ones, social protocols that comprise entering and remaining in that trade.  It is true—water has attributes and so in that sense can be considered a specialist, in the way that everything named is in some sense a specialist, so fulfilling its name.  But water, unlike the standard specialists, has no objective, no ambition, no resentment; it is full of life, creates primarily but does destroy, and is acquainted with worms and mud.

The one who is close to the way is also acquainted with worms and mud.  So, like worms, she is not unacquainted with the arts of enriching, aerating, decomposing, circulating, and transforming the putrid decay most avoid into the blabby light most desire.  So, like mud, she is not unacquainted with providing habitats, sustenance, and hiding places.

She is close to the water and not unacquainted with its methods.  She spurts and froths, calms and eddies, quenches and nurtures, and on occasion destroys—often for good reason, sometimes for none.

Water’s goodness is unlike the common good—the good that trades in perks and prestige, comforts of all kinds, and evil.  For the common good has evil as one of its trading interests, but the highest good—though including its lower forms—does not keep evil at a distance, across its borders, but knows it well, even settling on its muddy wormy bed, close to the way, hidden from fault.  The highest good does not need to trade, as elements and creatures naturally embed themselves in it and trade emerges from deficiency.

Water goes anywhere and is found everywhere.  So the sage.  She does not distinguish between hotspots and cold, between renowned banks and anonymous ones, between wide and narrow, shallow and deep, torrential and still, turbid and clear, populated and empty, nutritious and unpalatable, complicated and sparse.  All of life is fascinating and good—and who is she to say that one aspect is better than another, that she is destined to only exist in one milieu?  Is she so small?  If she is, she is not a sage, but a specialist and she has a name and she contends to maintain it.