Wu Wei comes from Taoism and there is a really great book about it by Klaus Fischer, who has unfortunately passed away. I always wondered why it was never published in English – but maybe that will happen one day …

My wife gave me this book when I admitted myself to hospital almost 10 years ago. I was ill. I had a so-called ‘burnout’. I don’t really like the word, as it basically evokes a performance narrative: first you’re on fire for something and then, unfortunately, it’s over and the fire has died out. That’s not entirely wrong, but the very German and technocratic term ‘exhaustion depression’ actually describes it much better. This is because, in addition to exhaustion, depression is what is at the core of the actual clinical condition. But here we are getting off topic …

Why did I find the book ‘Wu Wei’ and the philosophy on which it is based so great, especially at the moment of burnout? And how did it help me to rethink my life and change it accordingly? What is Wu Wei all about? I guess one could say that this book was at the very beginning of my journey, which ultimately led to RSLNC and this platform …

First of all, Taoism and radical constructivism are relatively closely linked (you can read more about the latter here). Just as we construct our own reality every second – and so do all other people – and what we perceive is purely subjective and can never fulfil the claim to a single shared truth, we are also subject to the illusion that we have control over our lives or that we can control ourselves and our environment.

The desire to control our lives and thus fulfil our need for security is therefore not only incredibly exhausting and a trigger for stress and anxiety, but in principle a Don Quixote-like endeavour which cannot be achieved at all. This is because we have little or no influence on most things that happen in our lives. A few examples:

  • The influence we often want to exert on other people in our relationships (up to and including manipulative behaviour), and then the other person decides otherwise.
  • The woman or man we spontaneously fall in love with at the supermarket checkout after months of trying to find a partner on Tinder.
  • The car that has just been serviced in the garage but still breaks down two weeks later.
  • The rear-end collision we were involved in after setting off extra early, and which we would have simply driven past 5 minutes later.
  • The pay rise that we worked overtime for and then didn’t get.

So we try to influence our lives and gain control in many different ways, but are repeatedly confronted with the fact that we don’t succeed. This usually makes us doubly frustrated because we don’t (want to) understand that this kind of control simply doesn’t work and is an illusion. And this is exactly where the idea of Wu Wei comes in …

The key idea is: [Since you can’t control your life anyway, …] Just let life live you!

The jacket blurb of Theo Fischer’s book puts it like this:

“Wu Wei – this means acting from the inner centre, being in harmony with the flow of life, living in the here and now. For modern people with their hectic everyday lives and stressful jobs, this seems an unattainable goal. However, the Chinese sages have developed a simple and incredibly practical way of accepting and enjoying life in all its richness. If you follow it, nothing will throw you off track anymore.”

For someone who has striven for control all their life (me!), this is of course an outrageous thesis to begin with – even if it felt relieving when I first read it in the burnout clinic … So I just have to let go and trust life, and then everything will be fine? Wow! Nice idea. Honestly?

The whole thing seemed just as frightening to me as it was enticing and potentially liberating. After all, trust is the opposite of control. And although the rationality of the control illusion immediately made sense to me, the safety officer in my inner team immediately came forward with a big stop sign and a bold ‘But …’! What also irritated me was the supposed inconsistency in the logic that it was nevertheless important to take action at the right moment – which is also a central part of the Wu Wei philosophy.

Seven years later, I realised that Wu Wei is an invitation to let go and at the same time trust that life means well with me – and not an invitation to passivity. Because then I would be a ‘victim’ of life. Rather, it’s about trusting life and taking action at the right moment to seize the opportunities that present themselves. You could also say it’s about going with the flow and riding the wave of life as well as possible. Or to make the best possible use of chances that arise by themselves and over which you perhaps had no influence at all. It is therefore always necessary to seize an opportunity that presents itself. No matter in which area of life it pops up – at work, in everyday life, in relationships or in love.

P.S.: If you’re now thinking, ‘That’s a pointless reliance on chance!’, read on here …