Being the Tao
Inspired by the movie The Intern
The idea for
today’s spiritual musing presupposes so much that I don’t know if I can do it
justice; but I have to try, or why else would I have been called to write it?
Upon reflection, I
can see now how the idea came about; but it wasn’t until I heard Jules (Anne Hathaway)
say to her new intern Ben (Robert De Niro) in Nancy Meyers movie The Intern “How is it that you always manage to say the right thing, do the right
thing, and be the right thing?” that the words “BEING THE TAO” popped into my
mind, because unconsciously I had picked up that Jules Ostin’s intern Ben Whittaker
was in the Tao; and that’s the subject of today’s spiritual musing...
In Chinese, Tao
means the way, and the teaching of
Taoism is all about living the way; but
here’s where we run into a problem because, as I wrote in my spiritual musing
“An Old Chinese Proverb,” defining the Tao is next to impossible. But because I know what the Tao is, I have to try;
and I know what the Tao is because I
was initiated into the sacred mystery of the
way on my own journey to wholeness and completeness. That’s why I said that
this idea of BEING
THE TAO
presupposes so much that I may not be able to do it justice. However, it behooves me to offer my personal definition of the way, which has been drawn from my life of living the way consciously from the moment I awakened
to the way: the way is the inherent wisdom
of the teleological imperative of life; and living one’s life with purpose is
living the imperative of the way, which
initiates one into the sacred mystery of one's true self and the Tao. In short, the way is the self-reconciling factor of life.
But why did the
phrase BEING
THE TAO
pop into my mind and not BEING
IN THE TAO,
which would seem to make more sense? This, I believe, is the central mystery of
the way that I’ve been called upon to
explore in today’s spiritual musing.
I’ve learned to
have implicit trust in my Muse (my creative unconscious), so I know that I’ve been called to elucidate
upon the difference between BEING THE TAO and BEING IN THE TAO; and this
difference speaks to the journey and the destination, because to be the Tao one must become the Tao, and that’s what living the way is all about.
For clarity’s
sake, I’m going to simple refer to the Tao as the way, because my sidebar Merriam Webster dictionary defines way as: a thoroughfare for travel or transportation
from place to place; the course traveled from one place to another: route; a
course (a series of actions or sequences of events leading in a direction or
toward an objective, which implies that the way is a process that leads to a destination; but what destination?
That’s the sacred
mystery of the way, because the way leads to itself; that’s why my Muse
popped the words BEING
THE TAO
into my mind instead of BEING
IN THE TAO,
because Jules Ostin’s new intern Ben Whittaker was his own Tao, or way.
And I knew this instinctively, because I too had become my own way in my self-initiation into the
sacred mystery; and being his own way,
Ben Whittaker was BEING
THE TAO.
This sounds like esoteric
gobbledygook, but all it means is that seventy-year old intern Ben Whittaker
was his own man; that’s why his young boss Jules Ostin, founding owner of the
hugely successful e-commerce business called “About the Fit,” called him
“cool.” Ben Whittaker played the game of life, but by his own rules; that’s
what made him cool.
In my spiritual
musing “The Essence of Cool,” I quote David Brooks (columnist for the New York Times and author of The Road to Character): “The cool person is stoical, emotionally
controlled, never eager or needy, but instead mysterious, detached and
self-possessed. The cool person is gracefully competent at something, but
doesn’t need the world’s applause to know his worth. That’s because the cool
person has found his or her own unique and authentic way of living with
nonchalant intensity.”
That’s Ben
Whittaker to a tee, a self-possessed septuagenarian widower with a moral
center; well-seasoned, balanced, and sensitive enough to care about people who
come into his life. “The cool person,” said
David Brooks, “is guided by his or her
own autonomous values, often on the outskirts of society,” which was what
fascinated me about the easy-going Ben Whittaker in Nancy Meyers deceptively
simple, feel-good comedy The Intern.
The morning after
Penny and I watched The Intern on
Neflix, I went online to read the reviews; and it didn’t surprise me that every
review missed the core message of the feel-good comedy which Ben Whittaker
personified with natural charm and aplomb, the edifying principles of Tai Chi
which are founded on Taoism, the way to
wholeness and completeness; that’s what led me to see Nancy Meyers, the
writer-director of The Intern, as the
female Woody Allen of movie-making sans Allen’s moral vacuity, which was why
Meyers had The Intern open with a
scene of Ben Whittaker doing Tai Chi exercises in an open park with a group of
seniors, and why she brought The Intern
to graceful closure with another scene of Ben Whittaker doing his Tai Chi
exercises, but this time with his young boss Jules Ostin joining him, thus
implying that she was embracing the edifying philosophy of Taoism.
The premise of
today’s spiritual musing rests upon my perception that the seventy-year-old widower
intern personified the principles of Tai Chi, and my response would be that the
script writer-director Nancy Meyers succeeded; otherwise my creative
unconscious would not have picked it up and inspired me with the words BEING THE TAO when Jules,
albeit inebriated, said to her intern Ben Whittaker: “How is it that you always manage to say the right thing, do the right
thing, and be the right thing?” Which
is nothing more, or less, than BEING THE TAO.
———
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