The Tao of Active Investing

The principles of building lasting value are timeless and universal. Chwan Tzu, an ancient Chinese philosopher, wrote the following centuries ago. It illustrates the impact of a repetitive, powerful, and gentle lifestyle as described in the Tao, the Chinese book about understanding and joining with natural forces. The story starts when Prince Hui complements his cook on his skills with a cleaver.

"Well done!" cried the Prince; "yours is skill indeed."
"Sire," replied the cook, "I have always devoted myself to Tao. It is better than skill. When I first began to cut up bullocks, I saw before me simply whole bullocks. After three years' practice I saw no more whole animals. And now I work with my mind and not with my eye. When my senses bid me stop, but my mind urges me on, I fall back upon eternal principles. I follow such openings or cavities as there may be, according to the natural constitution of the animal. I do not attempt to cut through joints: still less through large bones.
"A good cook changes his chopper once a year -- because he cuts. An ordinary cook, once a month -- because he hacks. But I have had this chopper nineteen years, and although I have cut up many thousand bullocks, its edge is as if fresh from the whetstone. For at the joints there are always interstices, and the edge of a chopper being without thickness, it remains only to insert that which is without thickness into such an interstice. By these means the interstice will be enlarged, and the blade will find plenty of room. It is thus that I have kept my chopper for nineteen years as though fresh from the whetstone.
"Nevertheless, when I come upon a hard part where the blade meets with a difficulty, I am all caution. I fix my eye on it. I stay my hand, and gently apply my blade, until with a whach the part yields like earth crumbling to the ground. Then I take out my chopper, and stand up, and look around, and pause, until with an air of triumph I wipe my chopper and put it carefully away."
"Bravo!" cried the Prince. "From the words of this cook I have learned about the way of life."

A new active investing venture will always go through these 3 stages:
1) Seeing the whole and being confused by all its parts (Learning)
2) Understand the details and complexities (Managing)
3) Knowing exactly what to do from experience (Mastery)

Its comforting to know where we are at any given time and to be prepared to be happy there until we grow into the next stage.

Image credit: silentius