There’s no way that a map can predict all pitfalls & problems or all pleasant surprises. A map is a metaphor that can point to but not capture the actual journey itself. A map is seen through; the journey is lived through.
Guidebook to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Go, eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart, because it is now that God favors your works. Enjoy life with the wife you love, all the days of the vain life granted you under the sun. This is your lot in life for the toil of your labors under the sun.
Anything you can turn your hand to, do with what power you have; for there will be no work, no planning, no knowledge, no wisdom in Sheol where you are going.
Ecclesiastes 9:7-10
Here every step, forward or backward, leads into danger. Escape is out of the question.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
Venture capitalists expect some of businesses they back to fail; if that never happens, they aren’t taking enough risks. Similarly, a government program aimed at advancing technology is bound to end up with some lemons; if it doesn’t, it’s not extending the frontier.
Paul Krugman
Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. What do you see?–Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries.
But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster–tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks.
How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here? But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive.
Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice.
No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in.
And there they stand–miles of them–leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues–north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite.
Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Heaven & earth do not unite… Thus the superior man falls back upon his inner worth in order to escape the difficulties.
The I Ching or Book of Changes
La República de California was an unrecognized breakaway state from Mexico, that for 25 days in 1846 militarily controlled an area north of San Francisco.
Mexican officials had been concerned about a coming war with the United States and the growing influx of Americans into California. The rebellion was covertly encouraged by US Army Captain John Frémont.
“California Republic” appeared only on the flag the insurgents raised in Sonoma. It indicated their aspiration of forming a republican government under their control.
The Bear Flag Revolt and whatever remained of the “California Republic” ceased to exist on July 9 when US Navy Lieutenant Joseph Revere raised the United States flag in front of the Sonoma Barracks and sent a second flag to be raised at Sutter’s Fort.
