Tao Yuanming
He Made a Poem of the Day He Begged
Begging for Food
Tao Yuanming, Begging for Food; Returning to Dwell in Gardens and Fields; Book of Song, Biographies of Recluses
Going broke on the road you chose. How poor Tao Yuanming actually got, and what he did with that fact.
What actually happened?
After the resignation he was genuinely poor. At forty-four a fire took the house. One year the grain ran out, he went out to beg, and came home and wrote a poem called Begging for Food: hunger drove me out and I did not know where I was going; I came to this village, knocked at a door, and the words would not come. He set the most humiliating thing down as it was, with no polish and no complaint. In the same years he wrote of his five sons, none fond of books, and ended: if heaven has decreed it, pour another cup.
Poverty was the price of the road, so no complaint
He writes himself as neither victim nor saint. He keeps accounts: hungry, went to beg, could not speak. Take the cost of the road you chose as it comes, without pushing it onto anyone or gilding it. Resentment ties you to the road you did not take.
If money is tight after you chose your own way of living, do not blame the world or perform serenity. You bought this.
Written down, the humiliating thing stops being unspeakable
Begging was the most shameful thing that could happen to him, and he made a poem of it that outlasted him. The act of writing converts shame into something that happened. What cannot be said is holding you; once written, you are holding it.
Write out once, for yourself, the thing you least want anyone to know. It gets lighter as soon as it exists.
He was poor and he still did not go back
Twenty-odd years out of office, twenty-odd years poor, and he refused every summons the court sent. The poverty is real and the not going back is real, both at once. That is what shows the turn was priced rather than impulsive.
A hard life after the turn does not mean the turn was wrong. The test is do I want to go back, not is this hard.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you moved to a road you actually wanted, money is now tight, and you have started doubting the choice.
Ask first: is the pain that life is hard, or that I want to go back? Have I ever written this stretch down exactly as it was?
Where it goes wrong: reading it as contentment in poverty. He was not content. He wrote that the words would not come at the door. The point is owning the price, not complaining and not returning, and not calling poverty good.
Lines to keep
Take the cost of the road you chose without gilding or blame.
Unsaid, it holds you. Written down, you are holding it.
The test is whether you want to go back, not whether it hurts.
Same situation, other people are asking
This month is on me. I can't think about next year.There's money in the account and I don't know when it runs out.I can't pay it back and I haven't told anyone at home.Money fights are pushing us apart.Not enough money · all 10 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.