Tao Te Ching – Chapter Three
Written by Lao-tzu – From a translation by S. Mitchell
If you over esteem great men,
people become powerless.
If you overvalue possessions,
people begin to steal.
The Master leads
by emptying people's minds
and filling their cores,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.
He helps people lose everything
they know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think that they know.
Practice not-doing,
and everything will fall into place.
How I Read This Chapter
If you glorify those who drink like gentlemen,
You lose faith in yourself .
If you chase after pleasure,
you invite craving and deceit.
The path of sobriety leads,
by quieting the noise in our minds,
and nourishing the truth in our hearts,
by softening selfish ambition,
and strengthening honest intent.
The Way help’s us let go,
of what we think we know,
and release the grip of desire—
bringing humility
to those trapped in certainty.
Live in surrender,
and the path will unfold.
What This Means To Me
For most of my drinking life, I could never understand people who could sit with a single glass of wine or whisky and let it rest untouched for half an hour. It baffled me—this idea of “just one drink.” Why would anyone want just one when the bottle was right there, promising release, escape, a sense of being whole for a fleeting moment? To me, the first drink was never the end; it was the permission to have the second, third, fourth. I wasn’t drinking to enjoy—I was drinking to forget, to numb, to feed something hollow inside me that never seemed full. That insatiable thirst wasn’t just for alcohol; it was for meaning, peace, escape from self.
This verse from the Tao speaks directly to the trap I lived in. I spent so much time chasing—chasing status, chasing ease, chasing the next drink, the next laugh, the next moment where I could feel okay. I thought if I could just have more, I might be more. But the more I took, the less of myself I became. Alcohol stole from me my ability to discern what was right or wrong. When I wanted to drink, that was the only truth I recognised. I lied, I hid, I manipulated—not because I was evil, but because I had become enslaved by the illusion that I needed alcohol to live, to function, to matter.
Recovery has shown me another way. It has revealed the power of surrender, of letting go of the ego that always screamed for more. This passage reminds me that wisdom doesn’t come from knowing all the answers, or from always getting what I want. True wisdom is in the emptying out—of old ideas, selfish ambitions, and the delusion that control was ever mine to hold. I had to be emptied so that something truer could fill me. Where I once chased after possessions, experiences, and people to validate me, I now seek stillness, presence, and connection. Not just to others, but to a Higher Power and to myself.
The idea of “not-doing” once seemed like weakness to me. I thought I had to try harder, fight harder, drink smarter. But in recovery, I’ve learned that the real strength is in surrender. In learning to pause, to ask for help, to sit with discomfort without reaching for a drink. I practice not-doing every time I admit powerlessness, every time I choose honesty over denial, stillness over escape. And in that practice, everything slowly begins to fall into place—not perfectly, but with a kind of grace I never knew before.
Today, I don’t need to fill myself with more in order to feel complete. I don’t need to understand why others can drink “like gentlemen,” because I know that I can’t. And more importantly, I’ve stopped wishing that I could. That longing has been replaced by something far more precious: a growing sense of peace, a clarity about who I am, and the strength to live one day at a time, free from the lies that alcohol once told me. In recovery, I am finally learning how to be whole without being full.
