Blog 616 – 04.28.2017

The Ying Yang

The Ying and the Yang, the long and the short ding-a-lang, the do and the don’t give a dang are the whole or holy situation of life. True peace and acceptance does not come from trying to force everyone and everything in your life or your world to conform to single vision but in accepting and loving the whole enchilada. When I was in my mid-forties and experiencing a bit of a mid-life crisis I got a tattoo on the left side of my chest, a cross with a man on it, a crucifix. I had two reasons: First and foremost I had not gotten the rite of passage tattoo in the military when I was eighteen not out of some wanting to honor my body as God’s temple or such but because I was a coward and afraid of the pain so I wanted to put that cowardly business to rest and secondly because though I no longer accepted a lot of Christianity’s teachings I still loved and always will the story of a God who loved his creation enough to take form as a man and die to prove his love for mankind and I wanted to always remember how much I am, we all are, loved. Most of my tattooed friends said, oh that is just the beginning, the first of many tattoos to come. I did not think so. One was more than enough I thought but a couple of years later I thought of another symbol I wanted on the right side of my chest to balance me out, the ying yang.

The ying yang is an ancient Chinese symbol that means balance or wholeness. It is made of two equal parts white and black with a small dot or eye of black on the white and a white dot or eye on the black. The lyric in the song It’s A Wonderful World expresses that wholeness, completeness best, I think, as, “The bright blessed day, and the dark sacred night.” The philosophy of the ying yang is that nothing is right or wrong but everything just is and that it is all a part of the whole. Lately I have caught myself using the expression quite frequently, “It is all good.” And getting quite a bit of push back, “No it isn’t. You don’t understand. This is very bad.” Is it? Are you sure. All too often what we judge as bad turns out to be not so bad at all and those things we think are very good can turn out to not be quite as good as we thought. Good and bad it seems can be quite relative terms. The sexy lady singing, “When I’m bad I’m better” and the Internet connection guy in Mockingbird singing, “I’ll do all I can to be a better man. I’ll clean up this act but be worse than when we started.” are both saying the same thing. Often those delivered from one addiction or shortcoming are quite mean and judgemental of those still doing those things. The hardest people on smokers are often former smokers. I have tried a time or two to be a vegetarian or vegan but I don’t like the way I act when I am not eating meat, eggs, or dairy – holier than thou. None of is or ever could be for we are all Holy and Whole no matter how messed up we think, speak, or act because these things are not Who and Whose we truly are and nothing and no one can ever change that immutable fact.

Having said that I believe the ying yang says it better and is a more complete symbol of wholeness, holiness than the crucifix. That man/God on the cross died to remind us that He/She never changed Her mind about His Creation. He/ She looked upon it and pronounced, “It is all good.” Only a confused or deceived man and woman could see it any differently and that l,because of that lying little snake I call ego. More than once God has said, “I am the LORD. I change not. The beginning, the end, the first, the last, the All in all, the whole enchilada. I paraphrased that last one but believe that to be the ying and yang of it.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White