Vitamin We #9: The Yin/Yang of Life

Happy Father’s Day!

We‘d love to show our appreciation to all the fathers and father figures who’ve shown up in our lives to be earnest providers, tender & loving protectors, disciplined builders, warriors of truth, leaders of light, the rocks who hold the family together, and just vulnerable humans who have the capacity to love and be loved :) 

Our society can be harsh on men. They are stereotypically the strong one, the tough one, the primary breadwinner, and the protector, being encouraged to swallow the emotions and bite the bullet because “men don’t cry.” They thought they had to figure everything out on their own without asking for help.

Sharing vulnerability could risk men's identity to be seen as weak; but does it have to be this way? Why are emotions seen as “bad” or “weak”?!

To us, We believe in the magic of the emotional power of humans - regardless of gender - because if our ideas are the seeds of imagination, then our emotional power (passion, pleasure, pain) is the fertile soil to bring forth that vision in our minds into reality when the timing is right!

Speaking about timing - Solstice will be on the 21st of June! This coming week as we are happily preparing for the Summer in the Northern Hemisphere, We are also cooking up some exciting plans for you to align with the seasonal change!

Stay tuned :)

- Ponny, Editor
together with Kelly, Pol & Deva @Women's entrance

Let’s be honest - Do you consider yourself a “workaholic”?

If you said Yes, does this identity give you a mix of guilt AND pride at the same time??!

It’s not your fault - the pride in working as hard as machines have been instilled by the hustle culture since the beginning of the industrial revolution and have become more pervasive with technology for the difficulty to disconnect.

Even in web3 and the start-up world, the ability to grind is still perceived as the prerequisite to business success and is constantly glorified 🤦‍♀️.

As if working a 60-hour workweek is something to prove we are useful, busy, and occupied (and hence an “important” person), or as the “badge” to be boasted about in social gatherings, like bragging about our scars❤️‍🩹?

Why are we trying to compete with machines and robots that do not need to sleep and never need to worry about energy supply to survive?

—

Any “-holic” = Opposite of Freedom!

We all know that being a workaholic has nothing to do with being effective and efficient. 😏

Why do we still do this? Besides the social conditioning, there are also “secondary benefits” - sometimes, we do this to avoid facing our fears within or doing what is truly important but scares us - i.e., using busyness as a delay tactic.

So, who do you work for?

Working for others? Blame the boss😆, or learn to hold stronger boundaries by communicating your standards and negotiating for what is reasonable. (trust me, negotiation is not that hard!!!)

Working for yourself? Well, can your CEO-self learn to become more empathetic and strategic to the worker-self and be less harsh and perfectionistic?

Leading a team? How can you be the role model of a humane work culture that your team members would feel respected and motivated to give their best while working alongside you in a sustainable way?

(By the way, as creatives, sometimes when we are immersive into our creative flow, we lose track of time and work until the creative urge within us gets expressed > that’s NOT the workaholism we are talking about!)

“ I've always loved drawing, especially technical drawing... I even wanted to make a living just from drawing!

I earned money, some wonderful years with technical illustration, as a freelancer.

As a teacher with a university degree and also qualified by Autodesk as a teacher of Autocad, I taught technical drawing to children and young people, I expanded the students to professionals in the industry, architecture and crafts.

The next step was to head a team of trainers for companies in the industrial and automotive sectors. Here I stopped drawing and teaching. This was a big change, as an evolution of earning potential. Still, I grew in the world of team management and complex project management... but I lost direct contact with drawing!

Now, near the end of my working life, I dream of meeting again soon with the origin, not thinking about the big incomes and... to draw freely what the choir tells me to draw at any given moment! ”

Idea #1 The Yin & Yang of Life:

There is nothing so permanent in the universe as never to change. We are all part of a universal process of growth and evolution, brought into being from the unceasing interchangeability of Yin/Yang.

Lee considered that many have mistakenly identified the Yin & Yang as dualistic - the soft style vs. the firm style. But in essence, Yin/Yang is one inseparable force of one unceasing interplay of movement, as two coexisting forces of one indivisible whole. They are not cause and effect but should be looked at as sound and echo, light and shadow.

Rejecting either the firm or the soft will lead to separation, and separation will lead to extreme, and nothing can survive long by going to either extreme. The stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the hallow bamboo survives by bending with the wind (Just like the Bamboo Scaffolds you see in Hong Kong‘s construction sites!).

The same is also applicable to masculinity and femininity - only when humans allow ourselves to be weak or strong at times can we allow Tao, the greatest strength of all living things, to be fully expressed.

The balance and harmony of Yin & Yang in ourselves, whether individually or collectively, is the essence of what We preach ☯️.

Idea #2 Be Water:

This is one of his most famous sayings:

One of the core principles of Wing Chun, a branch of Gung Fu where Lee spent 4 years of his early life training, is about gentleness in neutralizing one’s opponent’s effort and minimizing your own expenditure of energy. The discipline lies not in resisting one’s opponent with strength charging head-on into strength, but rather in learning how to understand and thereby utilize the other side’s force and energy to our own advantage.

Consider using this principle when facing adversity or combating force. Be so malleable that we can’t be hurt, yet when the timing is right, we can crush!

How do we let go? Try adopting the Way of No-Mindedness:

Like a cat🐱, when it leaps from the top of a table, the cat can simply let go of itself; it becomes completely relaxed and lands on the ground with a gentle thud and continues on its way.

“There is nothing to try to do, for whatever comes up moment by moment is accepted, including nonacceptance. No-mindedness is then not being without emotion or feeling but being one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked. It is a mind immune to emotional influences, like a river which everything is flowing on ceaselessly without cessation or standing still.”

Idea #3 All types of knowledge ultimately mean self-knowledge:

When Lee was teaching martial arts, he saw himself as the teacher of the “art of expressing the human body” because he understood that students were coming to him to learn how to express themselves through some movement, be it anger, determination, or whatever.

There are 3 stages of cultivation - the first stage is the stage of original ignorance, where a person knows nothing and responds instinctively; the second stage is the stage of sophistication, when a person starts training in techniques and can be “intellectually bound” as one’s actions can become mechanical; the third stage is the stage of artlessness, occurs after years of dedicated practice, one becomes spontaneous and can flow through one’s action in response to whatever happens like water, and is no longer confined in a particular style because one has already absorbed what is useful, rejected what is useless, and added what is specific to one’s individual needs.

Ultimately, Lee encouraged everyone not to look for a successful personality and duplicate them but to ask, “How can I be me?” , because the lock to the door of ego, or self-consciousness, which separates us from our natural, spontaneous true selves, cannot be opened by any other key than self-knowledge.