Gentleness | Patience | Humility
It all began with a jetty pattern I saw on an ancient bronze at the National Palace Museum in Taipei. The bronze was a vessel emblazoned with a series of spirals emanating from a center like a flower. I wish I had taken a photo, but all I have is a quick pencil sketch in an old notebook.
Water represents so many things, but in this collection, I wanted to convey the idea of calm, of taking things in stride, and riding out the metaphorical waves in life. The Taoist sage Laozi referred to the power of water when he wrote in the Tao Te Ching:
Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.
The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid.
Everyone knows this is true,
but few can put it into practice.
Sometimes life is just counterintuitive that way—the harder we push, the more we mess things up for ourselves. With this philosophy in mind, I wear this collection on days when I need a reminder to be patient and allow events to unfold.
Here's an insightful and soothing video on the philosophy of flow:
The exact words on the back of the large Flow Pendant are 柔之勝剛 (rou zhi sheng gang: "The soft overcomes the hard"). While there are a lot of ways to interpret Laozi's words, one of the meanings I derive is that gentleness is a great power, which also speaks to the unassuming force of femininity.
Confucius, a contemporary of Laozi, taught extensively about the proper ways of civil life and governance. In one teaching, he cautions humility to leaders of nations:
"The ruler is the boat and the people are the water. It is the water that bears the boat up, and the water that capsizes it."
Laozi echoes this sentiment: a great ruler is like the ocean. He sits at the lowest point and thus all waters flow to it. By positioning oneself humbly, he is open to receiving the wisdom of others, and thus gathers the greatest riches.
Read more about the seven virtues of water, as described by Laozi.