See the Series Introduction for Just Tao It, Part I: HERE
See the Just Tao It Series Introduction Tao/It on-ramp, PART II: HERE
See Just Tao It, Chapter 1: HERE
From my interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 63 (Unpublished):
Act without ado.
Serve what is.
Be among the willing few.
See seeds in trees
and trees in seeds.
Savor what is,
without excess.
Start small.
See both
this and that.
Do what is yours,
and let it be.
When things are easy,
see the difficulty.
When difficulty is all you see,
wear it down,
chip it away.
The great do not try to be great.
They are,
and do not hold to being.
Expect difficulty,
and meet what comes.
In this,
there is harmony.
With It,
love moves.
—
There’s a deadline sitting in front of me that does not care about my relationship with the Tao.
Kayser Ridge — the land, the retreat center, the physical expression of work I’ve been building toward for more than twenty years — needs to generate sustainable revenue within the next few years, or I’ll eventually be forced into decisions I don’t want to make. That reality shows up in spreadsheets, financial projections, meetings with accountants, retreat registrations, marketing plans, and the occasional 3:17 a.m. conversation with my own nervous system.
The Tao Te Ching says:
Act without ado. Serve what is.
Beautiful words. Though “what is” sometimes includes invoices, timelines, difficult conversations, and the recognition that meaningful things rarely sustain themselves through vision alone.
That tension sits at the center of this chapter for me.
There are days I can feel myself drifting toward Doing everything. Build faster. Push harder. Create more programs. Optimize. Solve. Move. The work gets done, though the pace slowly starts hollowing out the very quality that made Kayser Ridge worth building in the first place. Presence narrows. The land starts feeling like a production system instead of a living environment.
Other days I drift too far toward Being. Reflection expands. Possibilities remain possibilities. I convince myself patience is wisdom while decisions wait for my participation.
Neither side announces itself as excess while you’re inside it.
Most leaders are trained in Doing. Goals. Metrics. Execution. If something isn’t working, increase effort, improve systems, optimize performance, accelerate output.
There’s real value there. Though endless Doing creates distortions over time. Systems tighten. Relationships thin out. Attention fragments. The pace itself starts replacing discernment.
Overidentification with Being carries its own cost. Reflection replaces participation. Discernment drifts into hesitation. People protect themselves from difficulty with spacious language while the realities requiring action stay fully intact.
I’ve lived both sides long enough to recognize how convincing each one feels while you’re inside it. That tension isn’t only mine — I watched a room full of global development experts wrestle with the same split in 2025, inner growth on one side and outer impact on the other, without much agreement on where one ends and the other begins.
Human beings remain biological creatures. We still require pacing, recovery, relationship, conversation, meaning-making, and time for patterns to reveal themselves. We still require enough spaciousness to notice when acceleration itself is degrading the conditions required for good judgment.
Here’s what happened when AI met my spreadsheet. It built the formulas in ten seconds. It reorganized twenty tabs into three. It could not tell me which numbers should worry me and which ones were noise. It could not tell me what deserves my devotion, or what shouldn’t be sacrificed for speed. Those remain profoundly human responsibilities.
AI changes how I fill it out.
Serving what is doesn’t mean becoming endlessly agreeable or stepping back from responsibility. It means serving the system in front of me. Sometimes that means direction. Sometimes restraint. Sometimes patience. Richard Barrett likes to say organizations don’t change — people do. I think Chapter 63 would agree.
Leadership changes how I interpret it.
See seeds in trees and trees in seeds.
What is small is becoming something larger. What is large once began almost invisibly. Most meaningful change doesn’t arrive through dramatic declarations. It emerges through many small moves, repeated over time, by people capable of staying connected to both purpose and reality long enough for something durable to grow.
This chapter feels increasingly relevant politically, too. Authoritarian systems overfocus on Doing — move faster, consolidate power, eliminate friction — while discernment and trust erode underneath the speed. Democracies sometimes drift too far the other way, mistaking explanation for intervention. Both patterns destabilize what they claim to serve.
The Tao changes how I hold it.
Most days I still drift too far one direction or the other. Some mornings I wake up ready to overpower reality with effort. Other days I spend too much time reflecting after the decision has already become obvious. Kayser Ridge continues teaching me both sides with remarkable consistency.
The great do not try to be great. They are, and do not hold to being.
That line feels like relief now. It didn’t always. There’s something exhausting about constantly trying to become optimized, impressive, fully resolved, or important enough to outrun uncertainty.
The spreadsheet is still sitting there this morning. Waiting.
Here’s a Polarity Map for Doing (What’s Yours) AND Being (Let It Be):
INVITATIONS:
Try the AI-trained “Chat w/Cliff” for Step 1, Seeing, CLICK HERE.
If you want to take a quick self-assessment for Doing (What’s Yours) And Being (Let It Be)? CLICK HERE – the results include Leveraging Action Steps and Early Warnings (to support maximizing upside benefits and minimizing downside limitations).
Want to go deeper into Polarity Thinking? See our online self-directed Credentialing and Introduction to Polarity Practice, CLICK HERE.
