Well today was mostly horrible.

Work started with several failures at doing something simple, which made me feel useless for most of the day. That carried me through to after work, where I watched five full buses go by before I finally got my frozen ass onto the sixth one. As I worked my way home via the liquor store I reflected on how a crap day fits into Taoism.

Answer: pretty well. Much like Satanism, Taoism doesn’t punish failures or errors with guilt. When you make a mistake as a Taoist, you know, your whole day echoes with it. You are off track- it could be the way you woke up, the way someone spoke to you, the way your partner slammed the door, whatever. You are out of balance, and you will suffer it out for as long as it takes for you to find the Way, and then the world will bloom for you again.

There is no concept of sin here, no great principles that can be broken, no dogma. You do something wrong, you atone and you deal with it. You learn from it so that you won’t lose your Way again. You experience it for what it is, and then let it go.

Today started badly, but ended well.