An Ordinary Heart

“…but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it.”
Ro 9:31

It’s almost impossible for us to pursue anything disinterestedly, yet such is the key to achieve anything of true value. The people who are in hot pursuit of the pearl of great price should not have the object of their pursuit in mind all the time. To be mindful of our search is to be forgetful about it.

It’s something called an “ordinary heart,’ (平常心) a phrase coined by Lin, the champion of “Go” in Japan, and it means that a chess player should maintain a sense of equilibrium when she or he is competing. The ones who are overly concerned about winning will most likely lose. We all know why kickers who make the PAT routinely miss their crucial kicks when the game is on the line. Under critical circumstances, our minds tend to do strange things that keep us from performing our best physically.

We need to maintain a “ordinary heart” when we pursue the valuable attribute of righteousness.

A lot more than just an apple falling from a tree caused Newton to discover the law of gravity. He had done tons of research and thinking before the discovery was finally made, but in one sense, the natural law was revealed to him as accidentally as an apple falling down from a tree. Newton, being a devout Christian, might have been pursuing his scientific research both disinterestedly and intentionally.

One of the better poems that I wrote, I wrote unintentionally. I was sitting in the front yard one summer at my in-laws’ house and looking at a small pool of water, thinking about nothing in particular; yet in that ‘eureka’ moment an idea surfaced in my mind and a Chinese poem was written almost by itself. It wasn’t even a product of “a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” The poem was up there in the sultry noonday air, and I simply reached up and took hold of it.

Once, when I was a budding poet in high school, I climbed up a steep hill in the suburbs of Taipei and ventured into the woods to seek inspiration for my writing, yet after several hours of walking up and down in the mist and rain, I walked down from the mountain empty-handed, with head down and a few crumbled pieces of paper in my pocket. What I was searching for became quite elusive, for I was looking for it so attentively and intentionally.

Magical things tend to happen when we aren’t really looking for them. There’s something called “falling in love.” People may easily fall off the deep end if they intend to fall in love at any given moment. Such people can easily fall in love with anyone they meet for the very first time, even if it is a mule, for it makes very little difference whether the object of their affection is desirable or not, they have merely fallen in love with love.

When Peter suddenly realized he was walking on raging water, he started to sink.