Life Wisdom - By Words of Taoism - Everything Has Its Timing - Taoism

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

There is a time that cannot be shortened.Free resources, books and more on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://wordsoftaoism.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠My blog ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://taoismteachings.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠Music I use, as a playlist: ⁠⁠https://tinyurl.com/spotifyzenplaylist⁠⁠

Welcome to Life Wisdom. Today's meditation is called Everything Has Its Timing and is dedicated to those who feel rushed by life, to those who believe they're falling behind. I am Chen Li, author of the blog Word of Taoism on Substack, and you're listening to my podcast. Let me begin by telling you this story. There is a story told about a man who planted

oak trees. He was 80 years old, and someone asked him why he exhausted himself planting trees he would never see grow tall. The old man leaned on his spade, looked at the young sapling he had just set into the earth, and answered simply, Those who planted before me didn't wait for me either. Then he returned to his work, pressing the roots into the soil with the patient. of someone who knows that certain things take the time they take. This story belongs to another world, a world where one could still think in generations, where one accepted beginning what others would finish,

where the value of an act was not measured by its immediate result. That world has not entirely vanished, but it has considerably shrunk. We now live in the empire, of the instant, where everything that takes time has become suspect, where waiting is perceived as failure, where slowness resembles a disease to be cured. Look around you. Same day delivery, sometimes within the hour. Responses expected within minutes of sending a message. Visible results in just weeks. The advertisement's promise transforming yourself. We have built a world that promises us waiting is no longer necessary,

that delay is a technical problem soon to be solved, that everything we desire can be obtained now immediately, without that intermediate time that once separated desire from its satisfaction. This promise is seductive. It flatters something in us that does not like to wait, that would have the fruit ripe the moment we are hungry, the answer there, the moment we have asked the question, the transformation complete the moment we have decided upon it.

This impatience is nothing new. It is probably as old as humanity itself. What is new is that an entire civilization has organized itself to prove it right, to make it believe it is legitimate, to build systems that satisfy it faster and faster. And something has been lost in this process, something we struggle to name because we have forgotten it existed. The old man planting oak trees knew something we have unlearned.

Certain things take the time they take. And this time is not an obstacle to circumvent, but an essential dimension of what comes to be. A child does not grow faster because we ardently wish it. One can optimize nutrition, stimulate development, multiply educational activities. The child's body and mind will follow their own calendar, indifferent to our impatience.

A deep wound does not heal faster because we have had enough of suffering. tissues regenerate at their own rhythm, emotions are traversed at their own rhythm, and any attempt to force this process generally only delays or distorts it. A true relationship does not build faster, because we would already like to be intimate. Trust is woven thread by thread, encounter by encounter, and shortcuts create the illusion of closeness without its substance. There is in reality a temporality proper to things, a necessary duration that belongs to their very nature. The oak needs decades to become an oak.

Grief needs months, sometimes years, to accomplish its work. Deep friendship needs time shared. Trials weathered together, silences inhabited side by side. Mastery of an art needs patient repetition, accumulated mistakes, slow maturation. No technology can compress these durations without altering what comes to be. You can speed up the delivery of a parcel, but you cannot speed up the growth of a human being. The simple truth we have forgotten. Or rather, we live as if it no longer applies, as if the laws governing the living have been abolished by technical progress. We expect of ourselves, we expect of ourselves,

the same instantaneity as that of our machines. We want to learn fast, heal fast, change fast, succeed fast. And when things take time, when they take the time they have always taken, we interpret this delay as personal failure, an insufficiency to correct, a problem to solve. This war against necessary time exhausts us. It puts us in permanent conflict with the natural, rhythm of things and with our own nature.

We are living organisms, subject to the same laws as the oak and the seed, as the tide and the seasons. Our growth needs time. Our healing needs time. Our understanding needs time. To deny this does not suppress the need. It only creates additional suffering, that of struggling against what is. The old man planting oak trees does not struggle.

He knows the oak's time, and he attunes himself to it. He does not ask the tree to grow faster. He does not despair at not seeing the forest. He does what is to be done today, digging, planting, watering, and he lets time do the rest. This attitude is not resignation. It is a form of wisdom that recognizes what depends on us, and what does not, what we can control and what we must accompany. The tower sages had a word for this way of being,

Huawei, often translated as non-action, but meaning something more subtle, not forcing, not going against the current, not pulling on the shoots to make them grow faster. There is an old Chinese story about this, of an impatient farmer who found his rice was growing, too slowly. One day, he had the idea of gently pulling on each chute to help it grow. He worked all day, returning home exhausted but satisfied. The next morning, all his shoots were dead. In trying to

accelerate their growth, he had torn out their roots. This parable concerns us all. How many times have we pulled on the shoots of our own lives? How many times have we tried to force an understanding that was not ripe, rushed a decision that needed time, hurried a relationship that required patience? How many times have we damaged something precious by refusing to grant it the time it needed? The fruit picked too early is bitter.

Everyone knows this. and yet we keep picking too early. We want the result before the process is complete. We want the harvest before the ripening is finished. And we wonder that what we obtain does not have the flavor of what we hoped for. The decision made in haste often proves wrong, not because we lacked intelligence, but because we lacked time. That time which allows the different dimensions,

of a problem to reveal themselves, intuitions to form, consequences to take shape. The rushed relationship breaks, not because the people were incompatible, but because trust had not had time to take root, and the first storm swept away what was not yet solid. The work finished too quickly lacks depth, not because talent was lacking, but because the maturation that gives things their density did not take place. There is a cost to acceleration, and this cost is often precisely what we were seeking to obtain. We wanted the fruit, and by picking it too early, we lost the fruit. We wanted the relationship, and by rushing it, we lost the relationship.

We wanted understanding, and by refusing the time for reflection, we remained in confusion. Impatience is a particular form of blindness. It sees only the delay as obstacle and does not see the delay as condition. For time is not merely what separates us from what we want. It is what allows what we want to truly come into being.

The oak is not an acorn that waited long enough. It is what time makes of the acorn, the transformation that only duration. Wisdom is not information stored long enough. It is what time makes of experience, the integration that only duration allows. Deep friendship is not sympathy that lasted. It is what time makes of a relationship, the deepening that only duration makes possible. Time works. This idea has become foreign to us, accustomed as we are to thinking of time as an emptiness between two moments, a delay to reduce, a weight to endure. But time is not empty. It is full of

invisible labor, silent transformation, underground maturation. While we wait, something is happening. While nothing seems to move, something moves. While we grow impatient at the absence of visible results, roots extend in the darkness, preparing what will one day emerge into the light. The old man planting oak trees knows this. He knows that beneath the earth where no one looks, immense work is underway. The acorn cracks, the radical descends, the first roots seek their path between the stones. None of this is visible. None of this can be accelerated. and all of it is absolutely necessary for a tree to one day stand toward the sky. The invisible part of the process is as important as the visible part, perhaps more important still,

for it determines the solidity of what will come. So it is with us. When we pass through periods where nothing seems to advance, where we feel we are stagnating, where the results we hoped for us slow to come, something may be working in the depths. Understanding's ripen without our being conscious of them. Forces gather silently. Connections form between experiences we had not yet linked.

What resembles immobility may be preparation. What resembles delay may be maturation. What resembles failure may be gestation. This is not true. mean that all waiting is fruitful or that all delay is necessary. There's also procrastination, fear disguised as patience, avoidance masquerading as respect for time. Discernment lies in recognizing the difference, and this recognition is not always easy, but it may pass through a simple question. Is something preparing itself, or am I fleeing? Am I waiting for conditions to ripen, or am I afraid

to begin? True patience is active and attentive. It does what can be done and lets time do the rest. False patience is passive and evasive. It uses waiting as an excuse not to act. The old man does not sit beside the acorn waiting for it to become an oak. He digs, he plants, he waters, he protects, he does everything in his power. Then he withdraws and he withdraws and and lets time accomplish what he cannot. This combination of engaged action and confident letting go is at the heart of true patience. It is not passivity.

It is activity attuned to the rhythm of things. Each thing has its own time, its necessary duration, its particular rhythm. Learning to play an instrument does not take the same time, as learning a language, which does not take the same time as healing from a loss, which does not take the same time as building a friendship. These durations are different, but they have something in common. They cannot be arbitrarily compressed without something being lost.

One can accelerate the learning of an instrument with better methods, but there is an incompressible duration below, which mastery cannot occur. Muscles need time to develop their memory. The ear needs time to refine itself. Musical intuition needs time to form. This incompressible duration varies according to what is at stake, and also according to individuals. We do not all learn at the same speed, We do not all heal at the same speed. We do not all mature at the same speed. There is here an invitation to know oneself,

to recognize one's own rhythm, rather than imposing that of others upon oneself. We compare ourselves constantly, that person succeeded younger, another understood faster, yet another healed more quickly. These comparisons do us violence. They deny our own temporality, our singular path, our personal maturation.

Perhaps what takes longer for us teaches us something that speed would not have taught. Perhaps our apparent slowness is the sign of a depth being constructed. Perhaps our different rhythm corresponds to who we are, to what we have to traverse, to what we are becoming. The old man planting oaks does not compare himself to the one planting lettuce. He knows the temporalities are different and that each has its value. And then there are those intermediate times, those in-betweens that are perhaps the most difficult to inhabit. Those periods when one is no longer what one was but not yet what one will be. those transitions that last longer than expected,

where the old form has dissolved without the new one yet appearing, those chrysalis times when everything is transforming but nothing is yet visible. These times are uncomfortable. We would like to traverse them quickly to arrive on the other side to finally know what we are becoming. but the chrysalis cannot be opened prematurely. Inside the caterpillar dissolves almost entirely before the butterfly forms. This process needs its own time.

To interrupt it is to kill what was being born. The great transformations of our lives often follow this pattern. A career change, a separation, a bereavement, a conversion. all these transitions pass through a time of dissolution where what we were fades without what we will be yet being there. This time is disorienting, sometimes anguishing. We no longer know who we are, where we are going, what we want.

The old landmarks no longer function, and the new ones are not yet established. The temptation is great to flee this discomfort, to force the transition, to rush into a new identity to escape the uncertainty. But something is lost when one does this. True transformation needs this time of floating. This period when certainties are suspended, when identity is fluid, when everything is possible because nothing is yet fixed.

It is in this apparent void that something truly new can emerge. Not a repetition of what preceded, but a genuinely new form. The old man planting oak trees perhaps knows these times of transition. The seasons of his own life, when he was no longer the man he had been, but not yet the one he would become. He's perhaps learned to inhabit these in-betweens, to trust them, to traverse them without fleeing. And it is perhaps this wisdom that allows him today

to plant trees he will never see grow tall. The confidence that what is sown will bear fruit, even if this fruit belongs to a time he will not know. For there is in true patience a dimension of trust. Trust that what must ripen will ripen. Trust that time does its work even when we do not see it. Trust that the seeds planted will bear fruit, even if we are not there to harvest them.

This trust is not certainty. No one can guarantee the oak will grow, that healing will come, that the transformation will be accomplished. It is rather an interior disposition, a way of being in relationship with the uncertainty of time. This trust does not dispense with action. The old man plants,

waters, protects. He does everything that depends on him, but he does not exhaust himself trying to control what does not depend on him. He does not spend his nights worrying whether the oak will grow. He has done his part, and he lets time do its part. This division of labor between what falls to us

and what falls to time is at the heart of... We have trouble with this division, We would like to control everything, including what escapes our control by its very nature. We would like to master the calendar, decide the moment when things will happen, impose our tempo on a process that has its own. This will to control is understandable. It arises from our anxiety in the face of uncertainty, our desire for security, our difficulty in our difficulty in bearing. what we do not master. But it is also a source of suffering,

for it puts us at war with what is. To let go of control over the calendar does not mean abandoning all hope or ceasing all effort. It means recognizing that the when does not always belong to us, even when the what and the how-do. We can decide what we want to accomplish.

We can choose how we will go about it, but we cannot always decide when it will happen. This limit to our power is not a defeat. It is a recognition of our place in the order of things, a humility that is not humiliation but rightness. The old man planting oak trees has found this rightness. He does not take himself for the master of time. He does not believe his will can command the seasons.

He inscribes himself in a process vaster than himself, which began before him and will continue after him. This inscription is not a diminishment of his being. It is on the contrary what gives meaning to his gesture. To plant a tree, he will never see grow is not absurd. It is to participate in something that exceeds him, to link his existence to that of future generations. to affirm that the value of an act is not measured by what we personally gain from it.

Perhaps this is the final invitation of this reflection on necessary time, to widen our temporal horizon, to move beyond the obsession with immediate results, to recover the sense of duration, not through resignation or passivity, but through wisdom. through recognition that we are not the center of time, that our lives inscribe themselves in a vaster flow, that what we sow may perhaps be harvested by others.

This perspective may seem discouraging at first glance. What is the point of making efforts if we do not see their fruits? But it can also be profoundly liberating. It relieves us of the precious. to accomplish everything in our own lifetime, to see everything come to fruition before our death, to control everything to the end. It allows us to do our part,

sincerely, fully, joyfully, and to let go of the rest. It reconciles us with time, instead of exhausting us in struggling against it. The old man finishes planting his oak. He presses the earth around the roots, pours a little water, looks for a moment at the young tree barely standing upright. He does not know what will come to pass. Perhaps the tree will die next winter.

Perhaps it will be torn out by a storm. Perhaps it will grow for 200 years and shelter generations of children in its shade. The old man does not know, and he has made peace with this not knowing. He has done what was to be done. The rest belongs to time. And we, what are we planting? What gestures do we make today whose fruits will be harvested only much later? What seeds do we sow without knowing what will come of them?

What oaks do we plant that we will never see grow tall? These questions do not call for immediate answers. They ask perhaps simply to be carried, to run. ripen in us to do their silent work. For they too need time. The time it takes for something to shift, for a perspective to change, for a wisdom to become embodied.

This time, no one can decide for another. Each discovers it by walking, by living, by planting their own oaks. The time it takes is the time it takes. This phrase seems to say nothing, and yet it perhaps says the essential. It says that there is in things a proper duration we cannot suppress. It says that our impatience accelerates nothing, and our anxiety advances nothing. It says that wisdom lies not in vanquishing time, but in attuning ourselves to it,

as the old man attunes himself to the time of the oak. And perhaps this reconciliation with time is itself something that takes time. One does not become patient in a day. One does not learn to trust the process by simply deciding to do so. This wisdom builds slowly through the experiences where our impatience cost us dearly, through the moments where we discovered that waiting bore fruit, through the gradual realizations that time is not our enemy, but our ally. Somewhere, an old man plants an oak.

He asks nothing of us. He teaches us nothing. He simply does what he does, with the patience of those who have understood, and perhaps watching him do it, even in imagination, plants something in us too. A tiny seed, a beginning of wisdom. something that will take the time it takes to germinate, to grow, to become what it must become.