And Lao Tzu also said that, while being a man, one should retain a certain essential feminine element, and he who does this will become a channel for the whole world. The ideal of the hundred-percent tough guy—the rigid, rugged fellow with muscles like rocks—is really a weakness. Probably we assume this sort of tough exterior as a hard shell to protect ourselves not so much from the outside, as from fear of weakness on the inside. What happens if an engineer builds a completely rigid bridge? If, for example, the Golden Gate or the George Washington bridges didn’t sway in the wind; if they had no give, no yielding? They’d come crashing down. And so you can always be sure that when a man pretends to be a hundred percent man, he’s in doubt of his manhood. If he can allow himself to be weak, he can allow himself what is really the greatest strength—not only of human beings, but of all living things.