My Natural State

July 7, 2025

I’m trying to figure out how to live my life. And I wonder sometimes if I’m going to spend my whole life trying to figure out how to live my life, and then once I’ve figured it out I’ll be dead already. But I don’t know what else to do, so perhaps I can accept that my life itself is just the process of trying to figure out how to live my life.

In the Outer Chapters of Zhuangzi, there is a lot of talk about “intrinsic virtues.” The argument is reminiscent of Rousseau — essentially, we were all better off when we followed our natures, before we tried to govern each other and ourselves. The chapters in this vein hearken back to a time prior to China’s ancient legendary Emperors, when everybody just did whatever felt natural to them. They didn’t hem or haw, they didn’t make mistakes, and everybody was attuned to the Ways of Heaven.

Someone attuned to the Ways of Heaven doesn’t feel hot or cold and doesn’t like or dislike things. They don’t do what other people do, but they also don’t necessarily do what other people don’t do. They don’t let what other people do or don’t do affect them at all. They don’t run away from the world to live in isolation, but they also don’t rely on society.

In the Zhuangzi, a sage is a Perfect Man, but he’s also just some guy. When times are right, people might listen to his words and make the world a better place. When times are not right, he fades away in obscurity, seeming a fool. Either way, he never tries to do anything; he practices wu wei, doing by not-doing.

So you read all this and think, alright, maybe I should be a sage. It sounds like a good way to go. So then you think, what’s the natural thing for me to do right now? At this point, you’ve already messed up, because instead of doing the natural thing, you’re thinking about what it is. And also, you’re trying to do something, when you should be doing by not-doing. So then you think, well, maybe I just won’t do anything. Pretty quickly, you realize this isn’t going to get you anywhere, either.

But where are you trying to get to? You’re trying to become a sage, but that’s already a mistake, because you can’t become a sage by trying, only by not-doing. The only way to become a sage seems to involve already being a sage. And this is sort of where I’m stuck at the moment.

I don’t necessarily want to become a sage. I just want to life my life naturally, to “live the life spontaneously welling up inside of me.” I seem to be convinced that this is possible, despite the only examples I’ve ever heard of being fictional and/or legendary.

I’ve been trying to delete other people’s expectations of me. I’ve also been trying to delete other people’s judgments about my life. But I find in many cases that I can’t tell where their expectations/judgments end and mine begin. And then I wonder if there will even be anything left once I’ve deleted all these expectations and judgments, or if my life will just become a completely blank space. Will I continue to write if I have nothing to prove? If left entirely to my own devices, would I do anything at all? And if I did nothing at all, would I enjoy it? Or would I not enjoy it? And if I don’t enjoy it, is this because of guilt? And does this guilt come from failing myself, or failing someone else?

I’m so far from being natural at this point that I’m bordering on neuroticism. But then, what if I’m naturally neurotic? Is such a thing possible? Rousseau and many others wouldn’t think so, but their conception of nature is tied to a legendary past. One can’t be neurotic in Eden. But my natural state is within modern society, where it’s probably crazier to not be somewhat neurotic.

So, is my natural state any good? The assumption underlying all of this is that acting according to to one’s nature, or living the life that is spontaneously welling up inside of you, is a good thing. But I’ve only ever felt fulfilled when I’ve struggled to do something, like when I finished my first novel. And the satisfaction of my Free & Easy lifestyle comes from my not having to do things that other people feel they have to do: in other words, with the satisfaction of winning.

The argument against such successes is that they are fleeting: I finish my novel, and then I want to write another one. I simplify my life, and then I want to simplify it more. But then again, we’ve got to do something, don’t we? I can pretend that I’m a rock or a tree, but I’m not much of a rock or a tree. Just being alive means I have to breathe, and each time I’m done breathing I have to get ready to breathe again. It would be kind of a stupid question to wonder why I can’t just breathe once and then coast on that for the rest of my life.

And trees aren’t quite as stationary as people would like to believe! They’re busy; it’s just that they operate on a different timescale. Here’s a direct quote from a tree (emphasis added by me):

“The hawthorn, the pear, the orange, the rest of those fructiferous trees and shrubs — when their fruit is ripe they get plucked, and that is an insult. Their large branches are bent, their small branches are pruned. Thus do their abilities embitter their lives. That is why they die young, failing to fully live out their Heaven-given lifespans. They batter themselves with the vulgar conventions of the world, as do all the other things of the world. As for me, I’ve been working on being useless for a long time. It almost killed me, but I’ve finally managed it — and it is of great use to me! If I were useful, do you think I could have grown to be so great?”

You see, even the useless trees are working hard! Achieving one’s natural state means actively fighting against one’s unnatural state — but if you have to fight against it, as if it’s a current pulling you along, wouldn’t that make it one’s natural state? Perhaps it is not so. A salmon’s natural state is to fight against the current, making its way upriver. So perhaps a human’s natural state lies in fighting against it’s own natural state. We see the way we are going, and we say, “Let’s go somewhere else.” And we do that over and over again, leading ourselves this way and that, leaving behind us a topsy-turvy life unfit for any chronicle, finally ending up in a state neither finished or unfinished — that is to say, dead.