2022: Creating a Lexicon of Future

Field Guide to Flourishing: Y is for Yield

What Does It Mean to Yield?

Just as water yields to the rocks and the teeming life under the surface yields to the currents, the strength of the ecosystem comes from the collaborative engagement of all the elements staying in flow.

Yielding will overcome anything superior to itself; its strength is boundless.

The yielding will has a reposeful ease, soft as downy feathers — a quietude, a shrinking from action, an appearance of inability to do (the heart is humble, but the work is forceful). Placidly free from anxiety one acts in harmony with the opponent’s strength. One does not move ahead but responds to the fitting influence.

Nothing in the world is more yielding and softer than water; yet it penetrates the hardest. Insubstantial, it enters where no room is. It is so fine that it is impossible to grasp a handful of it; strike it, yet it does not suffer hurt; stab it, and it is not wounded. ~ Bruce Lee

Yielding Brings Balance

In order to care for ourselves and…