Tao Te Ching, Verse V: Hold On To What You Love (in my case it's software engineering)

I have been putting this one off four weeks.

It's so hard to write about and to apply.

But so it is. 

I am taking every verse of the Tao Te Ching and applying it to software engineering, this is one of my favourite texts of all time, and software engineering is my deep great passion.

I might even do part 2 of this text the "Hua Hu Ching" as well one day.

ps. yes I am off sick today. 

It's quite hard being off sick with ADHD - it can be really boring.

I still want to do what I love.

So I am doing some gentle blog posts but no real work work. I might do some Python courses though.

What's this verse about then?

This is not my favourite translation but this translation is readily available online so yeah there you go I'm using it for this blog.

I would say "hold fast to the centre" is a very important thing.

Really to me it means holding on to God, and holding on to my Being.

But really more practically what this means is:

• I hold on to my passion for software engineering
• I hold on to the fact that every single PR that I raise is a dream come true
• I hold on to the fact that every test that I write is a dream come true
• I hold on to the fact that every piece of code that I merge is a dream come true
• I am so grateful each and every day to be working as a software engineer
• I am so grateful each and every day to get to work for the wonderful company that I work for
• I hold on to my passion for the pylons
• I hold on to my passion for the wind farms
• I hold on to my passion for utilities and for the fact that I know that I have something absolutely huge to bring to this industry
• I hold on to my passion for coding
• I hold on to the fact that when I code, I come alive
• I hold on to the fact that when I talk about coding, I can't stop smiling
• I hold on to the fact that when I talk about coding, I light up
• I hold on to the fact that when I talk about coding, I become who I am; when I code, I become who i am; when I write code, I become who I am; thank you.

And there you go.

That is my hold onto the centre, please.

Thank you. That is the Zen of coding for you. Because that is Zen in a nutshell. True happiness, true joy.

Thank you.

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 5

Heaven and earth are ruthless;
They see the ten thousand things as dummies.
The wise are ruthless;
They see the people as dummies.

The space between heaven and earth is like a bellows.
The shape changes but not the form;
The more it moves, the more it yields.
More words count less.
Hold fast to the center.