The Tuatha’an are a nomadic tribe in the Wheel of Time series. They live by what they call “The Way of the Leaf.” It’s a philosophy of extreme pacifism. The Tuatha’an won’t ever pick up weapons, nor so much as raise a hand against someone else—even in self-defense.
Naturally, this makes them the perfect victims, and attacked they are, again, and again, and again. Whenever tragedy strikes, the current leader will try to soothe the tribe with their motto: “We bury our dead, and we go on. What else is there?”
If your gut reaction to this question is similar to mine, you may feel tempted to blurt out one of a thousand answers: “A lot, actually! You could run. You could fight. You could build traps to protect yourself without fighting. You could do a million things other than resign.”
In revisiting the tribe repeatedly throughout the show, it seems I’m not the only one who found the Tuatha’an philosophy unconvincing. Time and again, we see both main and side characters breaking with the Way of the Leaf in order to survive and protect the ones they love. Are they wrong? Is there something we’re missing? Or is this worldview simply not thought through enough to be compelling?
I don’t know the answer yet. My mind is still open. I will wait and see.
Sometimes, there’s a point of view we, for whatever reason, can’t access. Maybe its vantage point is too high, too low, or too far removed from the places our mind has comfortably ventured before. But then again, even after we finally leap, our conclusion might still be the same: This does not make sense to me, let alone for me.
If you’ve done all the mental gymnastics you can muster, this is a perfectly valid outcome. In fact, most ideas will have to die so you can choose the ones your real self truly longs to embrace. And when it comes to ideas rather than people, The Way of the Leaf offers a surprisingly calming outlook: “We bury our dead, and we go on. What else is there?”
