The Ineffable Power of Yin

Poem on hidden things

Invisible, soft- spoken, shy, almost stupid.

Clear like a pond, you look at me and see your own reflection, projection, validation, altogether missing me.

I am common like the sky, a rock, a small bird minding its own business, a cup on the ground, garbage.

I drift by you like smoke, like atoms, like something not altogether there. You barely register me, like a scent you are unsure if you are imagining.

When you speak, I listen. You think me dull, thoughtless — a submissive container to throw your opinions into.

You don’t ask what’s inside my dumb face, my quiet unassuming manner, my mild and vacant look.

But I absorb, I feel, I let things penetrate, grow inside of me, transform me, play around with me, revolve inside me before I speak, before I put words to a page.

For Yin is soft, subtle, like a listening mist, inarticulate fog — unlike dominant Yang, its only way to move is up, for it is the lowest of the low, ocean deep.

Underestimate Yin at your peril, for her ceiling knows no bounds, and she will outlast the hardest rock.

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For those of you who are familiar with the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator, I have always tested and identified as an INFP. It first took somebody else to make this observation and insist on testing me to prove it. She was an INFJ, and she was dead accurate in her diagnosis.

In my mind, INFPs, for better or worse, embody and exhibit a disproportionate amount of Yin energy, often characterized in Chinese philosophy as the female principle of the universe. I have tried, in my INFP way, to share some of this in my poem. It has taken me many years to find out what is positive or powerful about my personality type, and this is my first attempt to put it in language. It has been an arduous journey.

Two thoughtful introductions into the Chinese concepts of Yin and Yang are Tao, A New Way Of Thinking by Chung-yuan Chang, and The Propensity of Things by Francois Jullien. For an even simpler way in, I recommend Robin Wang’s Yinyang: The Way of Heaven and Earth in Chinese Thought and Culture.

© Carlo Zeno 2022

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