The rigid and stiff will be broken. The soft and yielding will overcome. Lao Tzu. Generally, people admire 'strength' and look down on 'weakness.' We associate strength with being firm and energetic. Strength allows us to accomplish things, fight back against adversity, not be swayed by the world around us, and be assertive.
It gets us places; we find it attractive and praiseworthy, and thus many aspire to be unbreakable pillars of strength.
We see the praise of strength all around us: we praise muscular bodies, wealthy entrepreneurs showing off their mansions and car collections, and political leaders that use strong language and aren't shy from using military action.
Weakness, on the other hand, we tend to associate with impotence, incompetence, fragility, being pushed around easily, and being powerless.
Weakness gets us nowhere; we find it unappealing and try to avoid it. We often hide our weaknesses; we're ashamed of them.
But there's more to weakness than it generally gets credit for. Despite all negative connotations, weakness, at its core, means a lack of strength, which is not necessarily a lack of power.
Strength implies being hard and firm; weakness implies being soft and malleable. But being soft and malleable is far from impotent.
Furthermore, softness (and therefore weakness) has the power to overcome strength, if used in the right ways.
"Weakness is how the Tao works," wrote Taoist sage Lao Tzu. Strength isn't always the answer.
In many situations, softness, not strength, weakness, not firmness, is the way to go, and we're better off yielding than fighting, adapting than opposing and submitting than dominating.
