GUA 46 · SHENG

The young tree slowly crafts itself underground. Invisible, hair-like feelers, sensing the least resistance, wrap and entwine the stones, becoming green shoots and then harder wood. An intelligence presses to exact and build with the smallest available things, each new molecule a little attainable goal to add up into a tree, reaching up for the sunlight. Thus beings add themselves upward, making their flesh out of dust and their wood out of water and wind, slowly improving themselves and their positions with a series of personal bests, going above and beyond their roots. Steady forces adapt and ingrain the true. Wise ones will not disregard the smaller developments.

Where a seed falls and sprouts is seldom much of a choice. Where we might find our various niches may also be somewhat haphazard, but sense and humility help. But next comes the time to make yourself what you might be, to occupy that place with living nerve, to extend and realize a self. This wants some boldness and skill. Wood pushing upwards grows with what is ingrained, it has the direction it needs. Each animal too is born with the right to strive to be the best and the most unequal that it can be. This boldness faces south, with the sun in its face, like the sovereign giving commands. Willful intelligence drives a willing response. We dare to seize our chances. Of course the big, quick, easy success will not be that great of a goal, no more than just wishing for luck, so what we are really asking for here is a lot of humbling work and the wisdom to find and follow the best examples and teachers. And great ends are often a long way away, so there is the question of pace. These will make a distinction between boldness alone and boldness that leads to success. Only the few achieve greatness, but the noble effort to live well is worth a life too.

Ambition, boldness, opportunism, preferment, taking of advantages, surmounting Developed proficiency, skill, mastery, competence, training, elevation, graduation Practice, education, edification; accretion, assimilation, constitution, construction Self-betterment, improvement, personal growth & bests; raising / rising standards Elevate, promote, overcome; graduated task; paced efforts, measuring of progress