How To Have Your Cake And Eat It Too (Tao Te Ching Edition)

“Freedom,” or chapter 80 in Ursula K. Le Guin’s interpretation of the Tao Te Ching has this footnote (and it’s as good as the chapter):

Lao Tzu thinks the materialistic dualist, who tries to ignore the body and live in the head, and the religious dualist, who despises the body and lives for a reward in heaven, are both dangerous and in danger. So enjoy your life, he says; live in your body, you are your body; where is there to go? Heaven and earth are one. As you walk the streets of your town you walk on the Way of heaven. 

You can’t just use logic and ignore the story. You can’t just use story and ignore logic. Both are dangerous and in danger. 

If you want to have some cake and eat it too, you better learn how to make a cake. 

Or, figure out what job you can do to earn the money to buy your sweet-tooth with a growing butt some cake. 

The good stuff is already all around us. It’s our job to process the good in order to appreciate its inherent goodness.