Tao Te Ching, Verse XII: Find Your Path, Find Your Passion, Follow Your Heart, Follow Your Destiny

Tao Te Ching, Verse XII: Find Your Path, Find Your Passion, Follow Your Heart, Follow Your Destiny

This verse is basically telling you to look inside of yourself. When I decided to become a software engineer, what did I have? I had so little. At the point of completely making the decision, I had been working in Product for two and a half months.

I had written in SQL. Maybe a tiny bit of Ruby.

I'm not even sure if I had done Python.

But I knew. I knew with all of my heart that this was meant to be; I knew that this was what I was meant to be.

I knew that this was what I was meant to be doing.

I know with all my heart that I had a life path and that I had a life purpose and that I had a life passion and that I had to follow it. I had so little experience but all the signs were there.

I kept bumping into software engineers everywhere.

I kept randomly meeting people by random coincidence who were telling me that this was what I was meant to be doing.

I couldn't let go of this.

I couldn't forget about this.

It was like an obsession.

I knew. I just knew. I just always, always knew.

background of a forest and hills in shades of khaki green and grey. golden text reads "when you know, you know".

The thing about my decision to make a software engineer was that it made no logical sense.

I hadn't ever thought of myself as a technical person before.

I had needed help at school with maths and science (largely due to inaccessible teaching and undiagnosed neurodiversity and the fact that I had to do these right til the end at my school). I had done an arts degree and specialised in arts subjects at school. I had done more techy masters degrees but not really. 

I thought of myself as creative and I thought software engineering wasn't creative (HA!).

I had a good job, I had good degrees I had spent years getting. 

Why throw all of that away? Ha, ha, ha. Lolz.

The five colours blind the eye, the five tones deafen the ear; look inside yourself, trust your heart, and don't listen to what anyone else is saying.

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 12

The five colours blind the eye.
The five tones deafen the ear.
The five flavours dull the taste.
Racing and hunting madden the mind.
Precious things lead one astray.

Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees.
He lets go of that and chooses this.


 

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