"Both action and inaction may find room in thee" - The Book of the Golden Precepts. Ancient Buddhist writing. 2.12, tr. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, 1889

We often hear admonitions to action. We are warned that if we do not move, we will be moved. We are taught how to judge if an action is correct, to react to actions.; given advice on how to choose the correct action, urged to abandon laziness, given wise words about how to act, or that we should do something  little each day. 'Every journey begins with a thousand steps', or 'all that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing’', and 'Rome was not built in a day', are all recognizable sayings and wise anecdotes. Thus, if we reflect back and think about it, we feel guilty when we laze on the couch. We think that if we had just worked a little bit harder, studied more, tried to be more social, or played one more game, that we could have done better. We could have succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. We think and believe that we can achieve whatever we want to achieve, and thus our failures in life are our own fault. If we find this message too much of a burden, then we can end up reacting in the opposite direction, feeling we are at the mercy of our class, society, or lady luck, throughout our life. If we are not responsible for our successes, if nobody really is, then perhaps nobody is really responsible for their failures. We can't get anywhere because the world won't let us. Perhaps it is better to give up, or perhaps we should be angry at our society or our world, at our luck or our family. When the power and purpose of action is most clearly felt by us, we think that action is all around us, that we are constantly pushing and being pushed, that we are simply either at the mercy of the winds of fate, or deterministic particles in a grand experiment. In our view, action overtakes inaction to such an extent that inaction itself seems to disappear, to become like nonsense to us. 

However, while inaction theoretically disappears from the world in this view, it does not go away in a practical sense. We experience inaction in a personal sense. Recall the words of the existentialist, who stated that even inaction is a kind of action, that by not choosing you are actually choosing something - inaction. Not all inaction is bad. There are times where the best activity is to wait for the right moment to act, to spread out the sail for the wind or apply a tiny bit of force at just the right time to take advantage of a force or a mistake. There are times where we need quiet and rest to heal and grow, to work op our courage or to incorporate a epiphany. Not all action is loud and violent, is directed at achieving some definitive and upsetting current circumstances. Sometimes it is better to take things slow and careful. When people change and become better, actualize themselves, criticize themselves and gain confidence, they change; It is true that sometimes change happens Ina  sudden and shocking manner, when we need a worldquake to knock us off our foundations, but more often change is slow and steady, silent and secret, a subtle swelling of a seed underground. 

We are inclined to worry, to be anxious and to always be trying to reach a more desirable future. We think about how things will go, and what we should do. We can get up every morning and exercise, or learn our word of the day. We can also give up, stop trying or run around in circles never going anywhere. We can be lazy and rude, thundering and snoring, cagey and direct. What I mean to say is: We can too easily lose ourselves and our way, too easily run towards and embrace one extreme or another - yet yet within the hearts of mankind, our hearts, we have the nature of a thing and its opposite. Our need for action and inaction are just some of those opposites. I don't go so far as to advocate the middle path of Aristotle, that we should always choose the mean between these two extremes, for I feel that imbalance is often needed to walk forward. But I would say, do not let one part of your nature, one vision in your mind's eye, overshadow and hide the other side of you. Find your soul on the winding path.


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