"At Birth a person is soft and yielding,

at death stiff and hard.

All beings, the grass, the trees:

alive, soft, and yielding;

dead, stiff, and hard.

 

Therefore the hard and inflexible

are friends of death.

The soft and yielding are friends of life.

 

An unyielding army is destroyed.

An unbending tree breaks.

 

The hard must humble itself

or be otherwise humbled.

The soft will ultimately ascend."
 

--- Tao Te Ching, 76, Brian Browne Walker

 

 

Contemporary Interpretation:

A baby's body is soft and gentle.

A corpse is hard and stiff.

Plants and trees are tender and full of sap.

Dead leaves are brittle and dry.

If you are rigid and unyielding,

you might as well be dead.

If you are soft and flexible, you are truly alive.

Soldiers trained to fight to the death will die.

A tree that cannot bend with the wind will snap.

Here's a useful saying:

The harder they come, the harder they fall.

Here's another:

The meek shall inherit the earth.

 

 --- Getting Right with Tao, 76, Ron Hogan