Gratitude & Giving

A mode of communication and care

It's December 🌲 and Yang Qi is just a few blinks away from total slumber beneath the deep comforters of Yin. It’s appropriate during the colder, darker months to draw attention inward and assess what is essential across all categories, and let go of the chaff without argument.

Yet, in modern western culture, urgency to be productive and active in the material marketplace is ever present. So what do we do about the tension between these? As usual, Daoist practice points us in the direction of appropriate response and discernment rather than judging one or the other as good or bad. My Taiwanese/East Asian culture has a long heritage that includes communication through gift-giving. One could judge it as purely material transaction, yet it's also an opportunity to show care and appreciation. After all, not everyone’s favorite way to communicate is in words. A little gift can say a lot about how we’ve been thinking about someone during the gaps between visits, that the relationship is alive even when we’re not sharing the same space and time. There are many ways to say I love you and I missed you, thank you, and so on. ☯️

I had a teacher in art school who was a key figure in my maturation through youthful years that vacillated between intense creativity and crisis. She was critical in honing my craft with her intellect, humor, and New York straight talk, while never wavering in kindness. She gave me extra time and attention, and held the boat steady with the confidence of being decades ahead, having faith in my capacity to persevere. I met up with her years later and in a more stable period of life. When I expressed my gratitude, her response surprised me. She said that students don’t know how important they are to teachers. After all, without them, teachers would be useless. Moreover, students bring different perspectives and ask questions the teacher wouldn’t have come up with on their own. Because teachers are just students a little further up the path, and without the relationship connecting them, both would spend a lot more time lost. 🌝

So I thank you for being here, some of you for quite some time. Thank you for supporting this unconventional endeavor, because it’s you who ultimately keeps it going, and anchors me in purpose. Most of all, thank you for your insights and dedication to training, it means more than you know.

🙏

Sally Chang, L.Ac., Chief Instructor of Evergreen Taiji Academy