Should You Reach Out to Someone You’ve Lost Touch With? — The Kui Hexagram’s "Sang Ma Wu Zhu" (Lost Horse, Do Not Chase; It Returns on Its Own)

Someone came to me asking whether they should reach out first to a friend they’d had a falling out with two years prior.

I asked, “What do you hope to get out of contacting him?”

He said, “I don’t really know. I just think about it sometimes.”

I said, “Then don’t reach out yet.”

He asked why.

I said, “If you don’t know what you want, you won’t know how to start the conversation. If you fumble the first approach, you’ll never get a second chance.”

In the context of looking for someone who’s drifted away, the First Line of the Kui Hexagram spells this out clearly.

Fire Above the Lake: Two Directions

The Kui Hexagram has Li (The Clinging) above and Dui (The Joyous) below — fire on top, marsh below.

The Great Xiang Commentary says: “Fire above, marsh below — this is Kui. The Junzi (Superior Person) acts in common while preserving differences.”

Fire burns upward; marsh water seeps downward. One rises, the other sinks.

Kui means standing back to back.

This hexagram speaks of rifts, drifting apart, and going separate ways.

But Kui has a unique take: it does not see drifting apart as a bad thing.

The Xugua (Sequence of Hexagrams) says: “Kui means estrangement. Estrangement inevitably leads to hardship, so it is followed by Jian (Obstruction).”

Drifting apart brings difficulties, but separation itself is a normal state of things.

“Heaven and earth are separate, yet their work of nurturing is the same; man and woman are different, yet their wills connect; all things have distinct forms, yet their affairs follow the same pattern.”

These three lines from the Xiang Commentary of Kui are the core of the entire hexagram.

Heaven and earth are apart, but both give life and nourish all things.

Men and women are different, but their hearts and minds can connect.

All things look different from one another, but their underlying workings belong to the same pattern.

Put simply: being apart does not mean the bond is broken.

That is exactly what Kui teaches in the context of reconnecting with someone: people may drift apart, but the path between them remains.

First Line: 丧马勿逐，自复 (Sang Ma Wu Zhu, Zi Fu — Lost Horse, Do Not Chase; It Will Return on Its Own)

The Line Text for the First Line of Kui reads: “Remorse disappears. 丧马勿逐，自复 (Sang Ma Wu Zhu, Zi Fu — Lost Horse, Do Not Chase; It Will Return on Its Own). Seeing an unpleasant person, no blame.”

“Lost horse” means the horse has run off.

“Do not chase” means don’t go after it.

“It will return on its own” means it will come back by itself.

These six characters are the most effortless line in the entire Kui Hexagram.

Why shouldn’t you chase a runaway horse?

Because you can’t outrun a horse in open country. The more you chase, the farther it runs. Worse, if you go chasing after it, you’ll get lost yourself.

Instead of chasing, leave the stable door open and put out hay. When it’s tired of running, it’ll come back on its own.

When people hear this line applied to reconnecting with someone, their first thought is often: “So I just shouldn’t look for them at all?”

It’s not that you shouldn’t look — it’s that you shouldn’t chase.

Chasing and looking are two different things.

Chasing is driven by urgency, by a score to settle, by “how could you do this to me?”

Looking is steady, measured, rooted in “I’m here if you want to connect.”

见恶人，无咎 (Jian E Ren, Wu Jiu — Seeing an Unpleasant Person, No Blame): Even Awkward Meetings Are Worth It

The First Line has another phrase: 见恶人，无咎 (Jian E Ren, Wu Jiu — Seeing an unpleasant person, no blame).

“Unpleasant person” here doesn’t necessarily mean a bad person. It refers to someone you don’t want to see, someone who rubs you the wrong way, someone who makes you uncomfortable.

Meeting them once carries no fault.

This line is extremely practical when it comes to reconnecting with someone.

Many people don’t reach out not because they can’t, but because of pride.

“He said those things about me back then — why should I be the one to back down first?”

“He never even called me — what would it look like if I initiated?”

That pride is real. But Kui says: meet them once, and there’s no blame.

“No blame” doesn’t mean “it’ll turn out well” — it means “nothing major will go wrong.”

Meeting them might be awkward at worst.

Not meeting them could mean ten years of silence.

Kui makes the math clear: the cost of awkwardness is lower than the cost of ten years apart.

Three Preconditions Before Reaching Out

I usually ask people to work through three questions first.

First: are you looking for the person, or for the time you shared together?

There’s a huge difference between the two.

If you’re chasing the old days, you’ll be disappointed even if you find them. People change, and the past can’t come back.

If you’re looking for the person themselves, what matters is who they are now — not who they were back then.

Second: what do you plan to say?

Not just “let’s catch up” — a specific, concrete line.

For example: “I’ve thought about what happened back then, and I realize I was too harsh with my words.”

A specific opening gets a specific response.

Third: what outcomes are you willing to accept?

The best case, the worst case, and everything in between.

Only reach out once you’ve thought through all three.

Because if you’re clear on what you can handle, you won’t fall apart if their reply is cold.

Three Times You Shouldn’t Reach Out

First: if you’re still furious.

If you reach out while you’re angry, you’re looking for a fight, not a person.

Second: if all you want is an apology.

People who demand an apology will never get one. An apology only counts when it’s given freely — it never comes when you demand it.

Third: if you’ve already reached out three times and gotten no reply.

Three unanswered messages is an answer in itself.

Kui says “lost horse, do not chase” — after the third attempt, leave the stable door open and go focus on other things.

How to Reach Out: A Low-Awkwardness Path

I once knew someone who handled this perfectly.

A businessman who’d split with his partner of six years. Two years went by with neither of them contacting the other.

In the third year, he sent his old partner a single message: “Your daughter’s taking the college entrance exam this year, right? How’d she do?”

The partner replied, and they talked for twenty minutes.

Later they met for a meal, and never brought up the old fight. After that, they ended up working together on a new project.

I asked him why he’d started with the daughter.

He said, “Because it was the one thing I knew he still cared about.”

That’s exactly the approach of Kui’s First Line.

Don’t chase the past, don’t dig up old scores. Start from a point where the connection is still alive.

After Reconnecting: How to Make It Work