The Weight of Being Different — Tao Te Ching

Lao Tzu opens by renouncing learning. When we renounce learning we have no troubles. He is not praising ignorance. He is refusing the endless chatter of the ready yes and flattering yea, the debates that sound wise but lead nowhere. What all men fear is indeed to be feared, but how wide and without end is the range of questions asking to be discussed. The opening sets the tone: stepping back from cleverness is itself a kind of peace.

Then the chapter turns personal. The multitude of men look satisfied and pleased, as if enjoying a full banquet, as if mounted on a tower in spring. Lao Tzu alone seems listless and still, his desires having as yet given no indication of their presence. He is like an infant which has not yet smiled, dejected and forlorn, as if he had no home to go to. The multitude all have enough and to spare. He alone seems to have lost everything. His mind is that of a stupid man. He is in a state of chaos.

Ordinary men look bright and intelligent while he alone seems benighted. They look full of discrimination while he alone is dull and confused. He seems carried about as on the sea, drifting as if he had nowhere to rest. All men have their spheres of action while he alone seems dull and incapable, like a rude borderer. Thus he alone is different from other men, but he values the nursing-mother, the Tao. The loneliness is real, but so is the anchor. He accepts outsider status because the deeper source matters more than fitting in.