The best thing about being an adult in a free society is that when your mother tells you to be careful, you don't have to listen. You can go ahead with that spelunking trip, dressed only in your underwear and a goofy smile. The time when you had to opt for safeness over adventure because your mother said so is long past. Or is it?
Try to walk through the Portland Chinese Garden and you would swear that some body's smothering mother was in charge. Except this time, every visitor is her special problem child. An entire section of the garden is blocked off with ropes and the message is reinforced by tacky laminated signs. The visitor, stopped in his tracks, strains his brain to figure out why the rockery is off limits, the cave is blocked, and the stepping stone bridge is verboten. Sure, if you were stoned out of your mind and a meteor hits you as you are about to take a step would any of these areas be dangerous.
But just like the paranoid mother whose motto is "You can never be too safe", management isn't going to let you take a chance and ruin their day. What they don't realize is that by blocking these areas that require some exertion, they have managed to eliminate the yang element that is supposed to balance out the ying element in any healthy organism. Yang, the masculine, active aspect of chi, oscillates with ying, the feminine, passive aspect to create a healthy flow of energy in an authentic Chinese garden. As a visitor to the Portland garden encounters the blockages in the garden's chi, his own chi constricts in sympathy.
The blocked chi of the garden is reflected in the frustration and disappointment of the visitors. But apparently it's worth it to give mother peace of mind.
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