Tao Te Ching – Chapter Fifty-Five
Written by Lao-tzu – From a translation by S. Mitchell
He who is in harmony with the Tao,
is like a newborn child.
Its bones are soft, its muscles are weak,
but its grip is powerful.
It doesn’t know about the union,
of male and female,
yet its phallus can stand erect,
so intense is its vital power.
It can scream its head off all day,
yet it never becomes hoarse,
so complete is its harmony.
The Master’s power is like this.
He lets all things come and go,
effortlessly, without desire.
He never expects results;
thus he is never disappointed.
He is never disappointed;
thus his spirit never grows old.
How I Read This Chapter
True strength is not force,
it is presence.
Softness is not weakness,
it is power in its purest form.
The Way is not rigid,
not controlling,
not hardened by fear.
It is alive, like a child,
fresh, whole, unburdened.
When we stop grasping,
stop expecting,
stop resisting,
we stay young in spirit.
We let life come and go,
like the breath.
And in that surrender,
we find lasting peace.
What This Means To Me
This chapter reminds me of something I’d forgotten for most of my life: that softness is sacred.
For years I thought I had to be hard to survive. Hardened to pain, to the world, to myself. I saw vulnerability as a risk and control as safety. But all that did was age me – from the inside out. My spirit became brittle from disappointment, from unmet expectations, from the war I was silently waging against life.
But recovery has been the slow return to something much older, and much younger, than all of that: a deep, childlike connection to the Tao. Not childish -childlike. Open. Soft. Honest. Real.
“He who is in harmony with the Tao is like a newborn child.” That line used to sound poetic. Now it feels true. There is a power in softness that I couldn’t see in my drinking days. A newborn child doesn’t grip through muscle – it grips through instinct, through presence, through being unguarded. That’s how I want to live. Not muscling my way through recovery or life, but holding on with honesty, with simplicity, with spirit.
“He lets all things come and go effortlessly, without desire.” I remember early recovery – how much I still wanted things to go a certain way. I wanted people to behave. I wanted feelings to pass faster. I wanted results. But the Tao, like the programme, taught me to let go of outcomes. Not to stop caring, but to stop clutching. The tighter I held onto expectations, the more they slipped away. The more I let go, the more peace I found.
And this, “He never expects results; thus he is never disappointed. He is never disappointed; thus his spirit never grows old.” That hits deep. Because I spent so many years disappointed. In myself. In others. In life. I was constantly measuring things against how I thought they should be. That gap – the gap between life as it was and life as I imagined – was where my suffering lived. Alcohol filled that gap for a time. But it never closed it. Alcohol is a solvent, not a filler, but my God is, the Way is.
Now, I try to live differently. I try to trust that whatever comes is part of the process. I show up, do the work, let go of the results. That doesn’t mean I don’t care – it means I don’t cling. When I do that, my spirit feels light. Ageless. Free. Like a child who trusts the moment.
This chapter reminds me that real power doesn’t come from toughness – it comes from tenderness. It comes from allowing. It comes from living in rhythm with the Tao, not wrestling against it.
Today, I let go. I soften. I trust. And in that softness, I find a strength I never knew I had.
