Dragon of the Eastern Sea

“The finest carvers do not impose. They listen.

A dragon appears in pale green jade — detailed, coiled, alive. The old belief in this tradition is that the dragon was always inside the stone. The carver did not add anything. The carver simply removed what was not the dragon.

We spend a great deal of a life trying to add. New skills, new titles, new versions of ourselves we hope will finally be enough. But some of the most important work of a life is subtractive. We remove the beliefs that were never ours. The obligations that no longer describe us. The armour that was useful once and is not anymore.

This piece isn’t about mythology.

It’s about what is still waiting inside you.

What is currently around you that you could quietly let fall away — to reveal what has been there the entire time?”