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Know one thing
Trust your gut
Fall in place
-安天美
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Knowledge comes in many forms, but the deepest knowing transcends intellectual understanding. "Know one thing" suggests not an encyclopaedic grasp of facts, but an intimate connection with a singular truth that becomes an anchor. This knowing lives in the body as much as the mind. It's the kind of understanding that reshapes how we move through the world.
Women across cultures have preserved wisdom through periods when their voices were silenced in public discourse. They embedded profound truths in daily practices, in stories told while hands were busy with work, in songs hummed while rocking children to sleep. These transmission methods turned ordinary moments into vessels of extraordinary knowledge.
The poem begins with this command to know, suggesting that certainty about even one thing can provide the foundation necessary for navigating life's complexities. In a world overflowing with information but starved for wisdom, knowing deeply rather than knowing broadly is a revolutionary act.
The gut has been recognised as a second brain by many wisdom traditions long before modern science confirmed its neural complexity. "Trust your gut" acknowledges this intuitive intelligence that operates beyond conscious reasoning. Our bodies register truth before our minds can articulate it. The flutter of warning, the expansion of rightness, the settling of recognition.
Women poets have often written about the wisdom of the body as a counterpoint to over-intellectualisation. They recognised that intuition isn't mystical but practical. A sophisticated information processing system drawing on subtle cues and pattern recognition too complex for conscious processing. The gut preserves what the mind might rationalise away.
This trust requires cultivating a relationship with our intuitive signals rather than dismissing them. It means learning to distinguish between fear and intuition, between socialised doubt and genuine warning. Trusting the gut isn't abandoning reason but embracing a more complete intelligence that integrates multiple ways of knowing.
"Fall in place" evokes the natural settling that occurs when resistance ceases. Like puzzle pieces that click together, or notes that find harmony, there's an effortlessness that emerges when we stop forcing outcomes. This falling isn't downward but inward, a return to proper alignment.
Throughout history, women observing natural cycles recognised that forcing rarely succeeds where allowing might flourish. The farmer who understands when to plant, when to tend, when to harvest works with natural timing rather than against it. Similarly, human lives have their seasons of preparation, action, and rest.
When we know our truth and trust our intuition, the final step often involves releasing the need to control exactly how things unfold. This release isn't abandonment of responsibility but recognition of participation in something larger than individual will.
The entire poem forms a practical meditation on how wisdom manifests in our lives. A process beginning with clear recognition, developing through embodied trust, and culminating in aligned action.
Women chroniclers of human experience have often highlighted how wisdom emerges through relationship rather than isolation. We know ourselves through encounters with others; we trust ourselves by testing intuition against lived experience; we find our place within communities and ecosystems rather than apart from them.
The brevity of the poem—just nine words—mirrors how wisdom often arrives not in elaborate philosophies but in simple truths recognised at exactly the right moment. The most profound guidance often comes as whispered reminders of what we already know but have temporarily forgotten.
The tree that bends with strong winds survives where rigid ones break; flexibility is a strategic strength.
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<aside> <img src="/icons/backward_blue.svg" alt="/icons/backward_blue.svg" width="40px" /> Imagined Presence
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<aside> <img src="/icons/forward_blue.svg" alt="/icons/forward_blue.svg" width="40px" /> Enduring Creations
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