溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
To Moisten Each Other, or to Forget Each Other and Be Free?
Is it a better love to forget each other in wide waters than to moisten each other on dry land?
To moisten each other with spittle is not so good as to forget each other in the rivers and lakes.
Zhuangzi drew fish stranded on land. When the spring dries, the fish spray each other with foam to keep one another wet, holding on pitiably. It is a moving love. Yet Zhuangzi says the unexpected — better than clinging and moistening each other is to swim free in wide rivers and lakes, forgetting even each other's existence. The paradox: a spacious freedom that does not bind may be a deeper love than tenderness in distress. The question branches. Confucians prized the affection and loyalty of moistening each other in hardship as the heart of being human. Daoists, by contrast, saw that attachment and dependence wear each other out, and held that a bond free enough to forget is more mature. Is love clinging close and moistening, or releasing each into freedom?
In an age needing constant checking and holding to feel safe, the idea that letting go may be a deeper love lands cool.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
I linger long before this paradox. How moving are the fish spraying foam for each other in distress — I have thought such love beautiful. Yet Zhuangzi tells me that the tenderness is itself a sign both are stranded on dry land. A bond kept alive only by clinging is already dried somewhere. Truly mature love may be releasing the other — not binding them, but letting each swim free in wide water. Between a love that holds and a love that lets go, I still gauge carefully which runs deeper.
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