Follow the Stream

​Be soft in your practice. Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a raging waterfall. Follow the stream, have faith in its course. It will go on its own way, meandering here, trickling there. It will find the grooves, the cracks, the crevices. Just follow it. Never let it out of your sight. It will take you.

- Sheng-yen

A child grew up in an old-fashioned household, and likewise, they held traditional values.

And of course, the children were to be held to the same standard.

However, the children were taught at public school where there are children who come from every background imaginable.

Yet, most of the children who went were brought up in more modern and progressive households that encouraged various explorations and phases that adolescents go through.

This child was more of the odd man out than one would think, and unfortunately…

...he was picked on for it.

Nothing too harsh, but he brushed up against many cold shoulders.

But he had a good friend that was in fact very different from him.

While the kid from the traditional family wore dress pants and his shirt tucked in, his friend wore colorful basketball shoes and ripped shorts.

While the traditional kid kept his hair trimmed short, his friend wore it long to the shoulders with one side shaved off.

The hair is really what his friend took to when he considered giving his square friend “cool lessons.”

“Let it all hang out.”

“Don’t be so uptight…”

“Be unique.”

While the traditional kid did not think he was any more uptight than the average kid, and that his parents made sure to tell him of his uniqueness, he nevertheless had enough respect for his friend to push him on his claims.

“Why do ‘you’ have to show your uniqueness so wild and crazily?”

“...doesn’t ‘your’ style also turn people off?”

“Why do you want to change who I am?”

And with this conversation between these two friends, both considered each others advice and remade themselves for the better.