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From my interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 12 (Unpublished):
Blindness for the color,
when too many run together.
Deafness for the notes,
when too many overtake each other.
Tastelessness for the flavor,
when too many at once to savor.
Distress for the being,
in too much doing.
Letting go of great excess,
holds on to what’s experienced.
—
I have an advanced degree from the School of Hard Knocks, with a specialization in holding on too long and letting go too soon.
Life eventually teaches most of us this polarity whether we volunteer for the curriculum or not.
One of my lessons came from holding on too long to my love of taking risks and letting go of caution too late. A mountain biking accident during COVID got my attention in a way I would not recommend. It also gave me more time than I expected to reflect on how easy it is to push past the point where effort actually serves us.
Yet the deeper lesson was never really about mountain biking.
The trail simply made visible patterns already operating elsewhere.
I had held on too long to consulting relationships that had already run their course, certainty about frameworks when reality was showing me their limits, intensity as identity, and being right when being effective would have served better.
I had also let go too soon of difficult conversations, necessary accountability, positions that needed holding, and effort that was just beginning to matter.
Both patterns damaged what I was trying to build. They did so differently, and usually slowly enough that I could explain away the consequences for a while.
Chapter 12 of the Tao Te Ching gets right to the point. Too many colors and we lose our ability to see. Too many sounds and we stop hearing. Too many flavors and we lose the ability to taste. Too much doing and we lose our sense of being.
The issue is not seeing, hearing, tasting, or doing. It is what happens when they all start running together.
At some point, more stops adding and starts taking away.
That feels increasingly important right now because modern life is becoming organized around continuous stimulation. Infinite feeds, perpetual commentary, notifications, outrage cycles, political theater, AI-generated content, and emotional activation compete relentlessly for our attention. Human beings are taking in extraordinary amounts of information while gradually losing relationship with discernment.
We have unprecedented access to information, perspectives, opinions, and reactions. Yet access alone does not create understanding. Many of us are consuming more while discerning less, reacting faster while reflecting less deeply, and confusing activity with engagement.
After a while, overload starts feeling normal.
That may be one of the most dangerous parts.
People gradually lose the ability to distinguish between what deserves sustained attention and what is merely competing aggressively for attention.
The consequences show up everywhere—in our personal lives, organizations, communities, and democracies—because overwhelmed human beings struggle to remain grounded for long. Nuance weakens. Patience shortens. Certainty becomes emotionally comforting. Reaction starts feeling more useful than reflection.
Systems that benefit from distraction, outrage, polarization, and continuous activation often thrive when people become exhausted, reactive, and unable to sustain attention long enough for discernment to emerge. Whether the source is political, commercial, ideological, or technological, the result can be remarkably similar. As attention fragments and emotional activation rises, our ability to distinguish what matters from what merely demands attention begins to erode.
When that happens, people start making progressively worse decisions about what to hold on to and what to let go of.
We hold on to outrage that serves no one while letting go of accountability that does. We hold on to being right while letting go of being effective. We hold on to reaction while letting go of strategy. We hold on to certainty while letting go of curiosity.
Daniel Kahneman’s work in Thinking, Fast and Slow helps explain part of what is happening cognitively. Under conditions of overload, human beings increasingly default to fast, reactive thinking because slower discernment requires energy, spaciousness, and attention.
And those capacities degrade under continuous stimulation.
AI accelerates this dramatically.
We can now generate information, analysis, images, reactions, commentary, and emotional activation at scales no human nervous system was designed to metabolize continuously. The pace keeps increasing while human discernment remains profoundly biological and developmental.
That gap matters. The consequences show up not in the availability of information, but in our declining capacity to discern what to do with it.
Though information and wisdom have never been the same thing.
Discernment still requires human beings capable of stepping back enough to ask what actually matters, what serves the whole, what requires sustained effort, and what needs releasing.
The challenge is not effort itself.
Life requires effort. Relationships require effort. Learning requires effort. Democracy requires effort. Meaningful change requires effort.
The question is whether our effort remains connected to purpose.
Right Effort serves something larger than itself. It is disciplined without becoming rigid, committed without becoming compulsive, and persistent without losing perspective. Excess Effort begins as commitment but gradually becomes self-consuming. The harder we push, the less clearly we see. What once served the journey slowly becomes the obstacle.
That is the polarity underneath this chapter:
Hold On to Right Effort AND Let Go of Excess Effort.
Without letting go of excess effort, everything fills in. We take in more, respond more, do more. It can look like engagement. It can feel like responsibility. Eventually, though, the volume dulls our senses. The very things meant to connect us to life begin distancing us from it.
Without holding on to Right Effort, nothing stabilizes for long. Difficult conversations remain avoided. Accountability weakens. Important commitments soften. Reflection disconnects from participation.
Both are necessary.
Both have limits.
And both can destabilize systems when overused.
I cannot help thinking about Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s observation that we are no longer merely arguing over policy or political party, but over whether we will become a civilization rooted in empathy and kindness or one rooted in cruelty and rage.
That feels like a Hold On AND Let Go choice at civilizational scale.
Hold on to empathy and let go of dehumanization. Hold on to accountability and let go of cruelty disguised as strength. Hold on to democratic participation and let go of compulsive outrage that slowly destroys the very capacities democracy depends upon.
Simple to describe. Extraordinarily difficult to practice while exhausted, overstimulated, angry, frightened, tribalized, and continuously activated by systems profiting from emotional escalation.
That is why this chapter feels far less abstract to me now than it once did.
I still mountain bike.
The trail never changed.
My relationship with it did.
Age played a role. Experience played a role. A broken neck and traumatic brain injury certainly got my attention. Yet the deeper lesson was never really about mountain biking. The trail simply made visible patterns already operating elsewhere.
What deserves holding on to?
What deserves letting go?
I have become better at holding on to Caution while continuing to appreciate Risk. Better at recognizing when persistence is required and when persistence has quietly become stubbornness. Better at noticing the difference between effort that serves a purpose and effort that merely serves itself.
That same adjustment keeps showing up elsewhere—in leadership, relationships, citizenship, aging, coaching, and how I try to participate in a world increasingly rewarded for acceleration.
Because letting go of excess is what allows us to hold on to what matters.
And in a culture continuously asking us to take in more, react more, argue more, produce more, consume more, and emotionally metabolize more than human beings were likely designed to carry, the ability to choose consciously what we hold on to—and what we release—may be one of the most important forms of leadership remaining available to us.
Including leadership over ourselves.
Here’s a polarity map that makes that dynamic visible—not to solve it, because you cannot solve a polarity, but to navigate it more consciously:
Here’s a Polarity Map for Holding On (to Right Effort) And Letting Go (of Excess Effort)
INVITATIONS:
If you want to take a quick self-assessment for Hold-on And Let Go: CLICK HERE
NOTE: the results include Leveraging Action Steps and Early Warnings (to support maximizing upside benefits and minimizing downside limitations).
Try the AI-trained Chat w/AI Cliff for support for Step 1, Seeing Polarities
Ready for the Polarity Advantage? Check out our online self-directed Basics, Credentialing, or in-person training with Barry Johnson and me at Kayser Ridge! Certifications and Courses
