This evening after reading the text again I picked up on something else. At the start, Laozi wrote "The world had a beginning, this can be considered the mother of the world." Here I think he is metaphorically referring to the beginning of the world as a mother. He then proceeds with "Knowing her children, return and preserve their mother" which in my understanding might be saying that we "the children" should be going back to preserve our mother, being the beginning. The philosopher is using metaphors to convey the message that we should be going back to preserve the beginning, in other…