These simple old words by Lao Tzu encourage us to cultivate openness and a sense of having life to give in our hearts. Life for ourselves, as much as for others. When we cultivate being 'for' ourselves, allowing mistakes and pitfalls, over and over again, coming back with a sense of kindness and patience towards ourselves, we nourish that green bough. We find that we no longer need to go into denial about the parts of ourselves that we don't particularly like. We find that we no longer need to have aversion to them, to use our energies to build strong fortifications around them so that we don't have to look at them or think about them. By dropping down into ourselves, and shining a torch light of awareness on these areas, whether they are difficult memories, regrets, or just aspects of ourselves, like our anxiety, or our pain, or our anger, we paradoxically become familiar with them, and this eventually engenders acceptance. We can become our own friend, and then the singing bird comes.