ETHOS (Part 5): Flexibility | Jake Haber

As we continue our ETHOS series , we explore the sacred superpower of flexibility - not the physical kind, but the spiritual and emotional kind that helps us move through life’s pressures without breaking. From shifting expectations to navigating change, we reflect on how letting go of rigidity can actually make us stronger, softer, and more alive.

 

Using imagery from nature and timeless wisdom, we examine what it means to stay limber in heart, mind, and soul - especially when life doesn’t go as planned. Whether you’re facing loss, transition, or simply the unpredictability of being human, this message invites you to bend, not break - and to find strength in softness.

 

Quotes:

 

1. Warren McCaig: “Be flexible or be miserable.”

2. Alan Watts:

   “There is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.” (The Wisdom of Insecurity)

   “The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.” (The Wisdom of Insecurity)

3. Tao Te Ching – Chapter 76:

   “When alive, the body is soft and pliant; when dead, it is hard and rigid. Living plants are tender and filled with sap; dead ones are brittle and dry. Therefore, the hard and inflexible are friends of death, The soft and yielding are friends of life.”

4. Tao Te Ching – Chapter 22:

   “If you want to become whole, let yourself be partial. If you want to become straight, let yourself be crooked. The flexible are preserved unbroken.”

5. Mary Oliver:

   “I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.”

6. Tao Te Ching – Chapter 78:

   “Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it….The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice.”

7. Tao Te Ching – Chapter 43:

   “The softest thing in the universe overcomes the hardest thing in the universe. That without substance can enter where there is no room. Thus I know the value of non-action.”

8. Iris DeMent ("Let The Mystery Be"):

   “I believe in love and I live my life accordingly, but I choose to let the mystery be.”