Who knew I was a Taoist all along? I thought I was a nihilist. Not the kind with black turtlenecks but another kind. I've always been a bit interested in Dao/Taoism but never studied. All of the western weirdos who were into Eastern philosophy scared me off. I didn't want to turn into one of them like Steve Jobs or that hippy book about motorcycle maintenance. I believe in living in the moment and always have. Back when I was first studying Chinese I learned all the words for moving around: directions, street signs and so on because those are immediately useful. A lot of them had the character dao in them somewhere, like dadao, boulevard or daoda, arrive.
One day, I step into the vestibule of some random temple and there is a two-story high scroll of the character 到.
As I craned my neck to see the top, I said, "ooooh, I get it! Dao! The way!"
Upon seeing this, I was enlightened.
A lot of the white guys who get really into eastern philosophy do it because they think it will make them more powerful, that it is some kind of magical secret that mysterious oriental monks take lifetimes to master, but their superior white boy abilities means they can become an expert after reading the wikipedia page on it and will unlock the magical secret that will allow them to become super rich and powerful.
A white man walks around the world, succeeding at everything without even trying: "is this the divine mandate of heaven? Is this the sound of one hand clapping?"
In my experience it's people who don't actually care about the philosophy but want to say that they are, to get as far away as possible from anything western and say, "look at me, I'm so fucking cool because I embrace The Other!" Poseurs.