Okay, just because I can't stand looking at myself in my profile smiling at the admittedly beautiful but politically loaded Japanese military flag, I have to post again.

Trevor says (contrary to popular belief -- my words, not his), that I am becoming one with the Tao. Straight up, yo. He also says that I am inclined toward melancholy, which he says he was put on this earth to remedy.

Oh, how I love him.

But, I asked, how can one be prone to melancholy, yet be one with the Tao? He says he feels my Yin and Yang are usually in balance, and that he considers me one of the most balanced people he knows, but every now and then Yin overflows. He says he thinks it's a habit, that I haven't always been this way. But it feels like I have.

It's not necessarily a bad thing, this melancholy. It's hardly ever crushing, but I can see why Trevor calls it a habit -- it's almost soothing sometimes.

I blame another habit for the melancholy -- introspection.

Sure, you can introspect yourself to the point of it being worthless -- criticizing yourself as wrong in everything you do or even the exact opposite. But for me, most of the time introspection is something I really value for everything from checking myself before I wrickety-wreck myself (Thanks O'Shea!), to keeping me from horribly freaking out about things I cannot change, to attempting to inject calm and lucidity into fear or anger or sadness or strife. I guess I think it helps me to see more clearly the Way. So maybe it's not always melancholy that I am feeling, but the (still-foreign to me) placidity of the void.

I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.

So, one with the Tao. Working on it. Er, or not working on it.