Deepa Natarajan adds on ..
We started this whole journey with a surprisingly deep piece of wisdom buried in a goofy 5 Star chocolate commercial: “Kabhi kabhi kuchh na karna bhi achha hai.” We laughed at how absurd the ad was, but let’s be honest, it touched a nerve.
It turns out this isn’t just a lazy modern excuse to chill. Thousands of years ago, Taoist philosophers called this exact mindset Wu Wei; the art of effortless action. Wu Wei isn’t about sitting around doing literally nothing forever; it’s about non-forcing. It’s the wisdom to stop frantically pushing, stop trying to micro-manage every outcome, and simply let the natural current of life carry things forward.
The problem? We humans are absolute control freaks. Whenever we’re faced with the unknown, our default instinct is to interfere.
It reminds me of that haunting line from Disney’s Colors of the Wind from the movie Pocahontas:
“How high does the sycamore grow? If you cut it down, then you’ll never know.”
Cutting the tree down is the ultimate act of aggressive “doing.” We do it because we’re impatient, or because a wild, living thing doesn’t fit neatly into our controlled plans.
Leaving that tree alone requires what the poet John Keats called Negative Capability. It’s that rare, beautiful ability to sit comfortably in “uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts” without desperately chasing after instant answers, logic, or control.
When we lack that mindset, we chop the sycamore down simply because we can’t stand the mystery of where it’s headed. But the second we cut it down, we freeze its potential forever. We lock ourselves out of what it could have become.
The sycamore already knows how to reach the sky. It knows from where to get its food, the air to breathe, and the sunshine to make it happy and content. It doesn’t need our micromanagement. We’d have also seen how the forest just grows, many times better than landscaped garden where the plants have to be changed frequently. When we practice Wu Wei and embrace Negative Capability, we’re choosing trust over control. We’re choosing to wait, to watch, and to finally see just how high things can grow when we simply step back and let them be.
So let the Sycamore in all of us grow. Don’t jump to decisions to cut it out way too early. Let it realise its full potential.
A blog by Saranya Iyer
I agree with Campbell’s quote – We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
When Plans get Interrupted
We might think that life has got in the way and it has interrupted all our plans. Interrupted plans interrupt our peace, but sometimes it pushes us to see the life’s wonders. When we go with the flow, we tend to get into a row with ourselves, for the stickler for perfection that we are, how do we make peace with sudden alterations in the daily rhythm?
Newer Possibilities
It can make us break into an all-consuming rage that demands us to cower before ourselves. But soon life reveals a possibility that we never thought of. Life can get in the way but it has its own way of piecing together the puzzle. It might rattle us for sure in the first instant but sooner than later, we will understand its rhythm and weave ourselves in its intricate dance of truth.
We cannot fathom for it is inscrutable but the larger picture always looks good, tailor-made to our larger good. When life decrees and dictates, we simply have to show up. Least it demands from us is to show up.
The Cadbury 5 Star Ad Campaign
This also reminds me of Cadbury 5 Star Ad campaign which shows a lady who is sitting on the roadside. She is helpless and asks a boy to pick up her walking stick. The young boy is deeply engrossed in eating and relishing the eponymous chocolate: Cadbury 5 star. He doesn’t move from his place, forget about coming forward to help the old lady. But anticipate the unanticipated as they say. A grand piano suddenly falls down out of nowhere just where the lady’s walking stick is. The old lady smiles and tells the boy, “Achha hua tuney kuch nahi kiya. Thank you beta.” The boy ignoring the sarcasm returns her thanks with welcome maa ji. Though Cadbury’s humour is to the point, it also offers life’s wisdom through the old lady’s words and the setting that develops in the Ad. The old lady is us desiring something but life has its own way of surprising us just like grand piano did in the ad. All we need to be like the young boy deeply meditating on the situations that life throws on us like he does with his chocolate. And surprisingly it will all turn out in our favour.
The bottom line is interruptions might unsettle us but we just have to offer a chance for it to unfold like the way it has imagined and sit back and watch the beauty that lies within its folds.
