You may remember that back in July I gave a glowing review of the book “The Eloquence of Silence” by Thomas Moore. New World Library was kind enough to provide an excerpt from the book to give my readers an idea as to what “The Eloquence of Silence” is like.
An Excerpt from “The Eloquence of Silence” by Thomas Moore
It was time for the emperor to retire and find a successor. To all the children of his empire he gave a pot full of rich, dark earth. “I have placed a seed in each pot,” he told the children. “Tend the pots, and the one who shows me the most beautiful and healthy plant will become ruler. I will look at the pots in four months’ time.”
Jun took his pot home and put it in a place in the sun and watered it daily and talked to it kindly. But it didn’t grow. Not one shoot of green broke through the earth. He tended it for four months, and nothing happened. Then it was the day to face the emperor.
Jun took his pot to the palace and joined a throng of other children with their pots. Immediately he saw that their pots were overflowing with stems and leaves of rich green plants standing tall and brilliant. The emperor came and looked at all the fertile pots and said to the children, “I boiled all those seeds. None of them should have come up. But look, there is only one empty pot. You others obviously replaced the seed I gave you with new seeds and tried to outwit your emperor. But here Jun has come honestly and courageously with an empty pot, and he will be your new emperor.”
It would be better to incorporate emptiness in all its forms into our conception of life. We need to tend our empty pots and not be embarrassed about the fact that there is nothing in them. Not growing may serve a purpose. If someone asks you, “What’s happening in your life?” you may answer, “Not much.” That simple affirmation of emptiness may mature you to the point where you can live your complexity. Not feeling compelled to display your success, your leafy growing plant, is an alternative to the demand to always manifest the big green leaves of success.
It isn’t easy to endure emptiness, even if it is of the mysterious and otherworldly kind. Everyone wants fullness and completion and success. It isn’t easy to endure failure, even if it is honest. It isn’t easy to disappoint with your emptiness and absence. But if that is indeed what you have, failure and emptiness, that is what you bring. You carry your emptiness, whatever it is, with grace.
This is one of the basic rules of life: Know how to bear the gaps and challenges. The children who put new seeds in their pots couldn’t bear bringing them to the emperor without a plant in them. Sometimes you simply have to hold on to failure instead of excusing it or finding a way to cover it over. Facing emptiness has its rewards.
Mysteriously, emptiness may define who you are and contribute to the fulfillment of your life. You may spend the energy of your life trying to avoid the gaps and inadequacies, but that avoidance makes you miss your mark.
The ancient Chinese story of the empty pot teaches us to accept the imperfections that life has given us. To deny them or pretend they do not exist may offer a momentary ego stroke but ultimately it keeps us from enjoying the reward of being in charge of our lives. To be an emperor in your life, you have to appreciate the nothingness when it pops up.
The image of the planted pot also points to the idea of growth. We would like to see our lives grow, as though they were plants just needing water and sunshine and plenty of care. But maybe growth isn’t the only important value. Maybe it is important that some of our potential doesn’t materialize. Maybe we need dead ends and failed opportunities. Maybe they are part of the whole picture of our being.
Development and maturing may not be the absolute values we think they are. James Hillman used to say that there is a maternal fantasy behind the very idea of human development. Like a child, we expect continuous growth and are disappointed or even alarmed if we don’t feel we are developing properly. We are not trees; we are human beings, he said. But maybe there are other deep fantasies of human life besides development and growth that are also valuable. Think of the lives of artists and scientists who ran into periods of blockages and overwhelming obstacles, how these fallow moments inspired new ideas or at least were an important part of the whole picture.
In our tale, the emperor is shrewd. He knows that following the rules and succeeding are not necessarily signs of a good potential leader. An emperor must also know the value of not growing and not being successful. At a deeper level of the tale, we might understand that for us to be successful at life, we need to nurture nongrowth and failure as well as growth and success.
Excerpted from the book “The Eloquence of Silence: Surprising Wisdom in Tales of Emptiness” ©2023 by Thomas Moore. Printed with permission from New World Library — www.newworldlibrary.com.
About Thomas Moore: Thomas Moore is the author of “The Eloquence of Silence” and 24 other books about bringing soul to our personal lives and culture, including the #1 New York Times bestseller “Care of the Soul”. He has been a Catholic monk and university professor and is also a psychotherapist influenced mainly by C. G. Jung and James Hillman. His work brings together spirituality, mythology, depth psychology, and the arts, emphasizing the importance of images and imagination. For more information visit http://www.ThomasMooreSoul.com
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