Moving Mountains
about weight-bearing and power of the small
Majestic towers. Gateways for epic adventures. Symbols of endurance. Spiritual temples. Pillars of biodiversity. Supreme barriers. Mountains both engender and disrupt landscapes.
Projects we pursue. Goals and achievements. Milestones. Difficulties and barriers in our lives. I think we all have mountains. But when difficulties are as big as mountains - how are we, in our smallness, to endure?
In Chinese mythology there’s an old fable known as The Foolish Old Man Removes the Mountains (first appeared in Book 5 of the Liezi). It teaches about the value of persistence and will power when dealing with hard and seemingly unmovable obstacles.
The two mountains Great Form and Royal Residence were hundreds of miles on each side, and one hundred thousand feet tall. Originally they were situated south of Qi province, north of Hoyang. A certain foolish old man of North Mountain, already ninety years old, lived facing the mountains. He was vexed by the mountains blocking the way north, necessitating a long detour to come and go. He gathered his family to come up with a plan. He said, “Why don’t we put all our energy into leveling the route through the south of Yu to the region south of the Han River?”
They agreed as a group, but his wife presented a doubt: “With your strength, you couldn’t make a dent in a dirt hill—what can you do about those two immense mountains? And where are you going to put all that earth and rock?”
Everyone said, “Throw it into the Po Sea, north of the Hidden Land.”
So he took along three men from among his sons and grandsons to haul loads, and they broke rock, dug earth, and hauled it to the seashore in baskets. The widow of the neighbor family had a young son who eagerly joined them.
It took from winter to summer just to make one round trip. A wise old man at the river bend laughed at them and tried to stop them, saying, “Your lack of intelligence is extreme! With the years and energy you’ve got left, you’ll never be able to break off the stalk of a single plant on the mountain—what can you do about the earth and stone?”
The foolish old man of North Mountain sighed and said, “Your mind is too inflexible to understand, not even as well as the widow’s boy. Though I die, my children will survive me; and my children will produce grandchildren, and my grandchildren will have children, and their children will have children, and those grandchildren will have children too. Children and grandchildren will continue to be born generation after generation, while the mountains will never grow larger—so why worry about not leveling the mountains?”
The wise old man of the river bend had no reply.
The spirit in charge of snakes heard this, and fearing the task would never be done, reported it to God. God was moved by their sincerity, and sent two sons of the titan Kua E to transport the two mountains. One was placed in the northeast, the other south of Ying. From then on there was no natural barrier between the south of Ji and the south of the Han River.
Can you see that too? Mountains do change.
The story advises: carry one stone at a time.
But in our modern existence, there’s a different narrative: we are admired when carrying the whole mountain at once. Perhaps you’ve felt it. Living in this time, comes with massive weight - far too big for one to bear.
It’s important to shift the attention to something less obvious - the power contained in small actions. Step by step, one stone, then another, tiny gestures have the power to decentralize success from one single moment to many moments spread in the course of time. Satisfaction that comes with small actions - and not only from big achievements or overcoming huge obstacles - makes it easier to carry on while facing adversity.
It’s in our vertical structure: just like pillars, humans uphold loads. The place we take in the web of life, comes in itself with responsibilities. Besides that, we take many other weights throughout our lifetime. However, along the way we have forgotten something. We aren’t supposed to carry it all.
Weight bearers, such as turtles, elephants, the great mother, have been part of various animate traditions around the world. Why? Because the heaviness inherent to the difficulties we deal in life, shouldn’t be held by one isolated part - one individual, one nuclear family - but a larger network of support.
This principle applies also to the world inside ourselves. For example, weight should be evenly distributed throughout the entire structure of the body. And shared with the ultimate weight bearer, the earth. When this happens, there’s lightness. But excessive individualism and independency opposes such natural optimization. Compartimentalized in the body, tension gets locked in horizontal bands around the eyes, throat, shoulders, diaphragm, pelvis and joints, preventing weight from traveling freely towards the ground.
Can you sense where you are holding back? Your inside and your outer reality reflect each other.
The tale also teaches that by not giving up, seemingly unmovable things can change overtime. Last December I got a tattoo of three mountains. I knew that endurance and willpower would be needed when facing the challenges of moving countries, developing the Quinta do Bem Haja project and beginning a new life with my family in Portugal.
And I was right. It has been very hard. As I write this, obstacles have been showing themselves in their fullness. Things are feeling heavy. Steps are met with resistance. And I feel that my strength is running out. I believe that a breaking point is closer than ever.
There’s big pressure to take decisions and act. At the same time, every single moment, every single breath, counts as space for being. It’s a strange ambiguity to inhabit: to experience the urgency to run and the space to nurture myself.
The old man who moved the mountains, may have felt it too - the constant labour that maintains connection between extremes, the big and the small, the long and the short lived, the possible and the impossible.
New forms are born under great pressure. And the edge of breaking is often the edge of breakthrough.I need to think about giving birth. There was the moment of giving up, when everything started to feel heavy and exhausting. I could not do it anymore. And then, things shifted. What was blocked or in stillstand, began unravelling with an incredible force. And my child was born.
Something in me, or maybe in us as a family, says “ don’t give up”. It could also be the voice of my mother. Or grandmother. Or from the amazing people I admire. Maybe it’s how the future sounds like.
The old foolish man who moved the mountains has already showed us that big solid things don’t move when everything is easy. The birthplace of transformation it’s in facing the true dimension of our mountains. And in the knowing that many small movements lead to big changes.
When everything seems to oppose you
When you feel you cannot even bear one more minute
Never give up.
Because it is the time and place that the course will divert!
Rumi