Laozi said, "The greatest pain in life lies in persisting in things that should not be persisted in."
This statement, spanning over two thousand years, still accurately strikes the emotional vulnerabilities of modern people.
We live in an era that encourages "never giving up", yet we seldom reflect: Are some persistences silently consuming our lives?
He was a great philosopher and thinker in ancient China, the founder of the Taoist school of thought. His main ideas were concentrated in the book "Tao Te Ching" (also known as "Laozi"), which contains profound views on the universe, life, and political wisdom.
We live in an era that encourages "never giving up", yet we seldom reflect: Are some persistences silently consuming our lives?
While another Wang Yangming was a renowned thinker, military strategist and politician, a master of the school of mind philosophy.
He founded the school of mind philosophy, emphasizing inner exploration rather than external pursuit. His influence was immense and even spread to Japan and Korea.
Wang Yangming spent seven consecutive days and nights staring at the bamboo, pondering deeply. However, he eventually fell ill but still achieved nothing.
This failure made him realize that persisting in the wrong methods would only lead one further away from the truth.
It was only when he abandoned his fixed mindset that he established the influential Neo-Confucianism system that had an impact across East Asia for hundreds of years.
--- -- When we let go of our insistence on a specific outcome, we might instead open up new possibilities.
Modern psychological research shows that the human brain has a "sunk cost fallacy": the more we have invested, the more difficult it is for us to give up, even if we know that continuing will only result in greater losses.
This explains why some people endure unhappy marriages for decades, why entrepreneurs invest their entire savings in doomed projects, and why we cling to relationships that consume us rather than letting go.
Nobel laureate in economics Daniel Kahneman pointed out: "The pain of loss is far greater than the joy of gain." It is this psychological mechanism that makes us prisoners of our own obsessions.
A talented screenwriter friend spent eight years persistently working on a script that was not well-received by anyone. When he finally gave up, he created an award-winning work in just three months.
He said, "I originally thought giving up meant admitting defeat. Now I understand that cutting losses in time is the respect for oneself."
Letting go of attachment is not a passive abandonment, but a higher-level wisdom for living. Just like in the game of Go, "abandoning a piece to gain the advantage", one must sacrifice the part in order to win the whole.
Management guru Peter Drucker once said, "Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things." Isn't life the same? Even if you run very fast on the wrong path, it's still not as good as making a brave turn at a crossroads.
How to distinguish between healthy persistence and harmful obsession? The key lies in three points:
- Does it make you narrower rather than broader?
- Does it bring continuous pain rather than phased growth?
- Has it clearly gone against reality but still refuses to adjust?
Laozi tells us: If you keep pouring water into a full cup, it will only lead to waste and chaos.
Life has a limited space. Only by clearing away some attachments can we accommodate new possibilities.
This is not failure, but a more sophisticated victory - defeating that self that is stuck in its ways.
In this era of rapid change, perhaps the greatest wisdom is not to persist to the end, but to know when to gracefully turn around. After all, if a butterfly does not break free from the cocoon, it will never be able to spread its wings and fly.
