No Talent for Forgetting What You Learn? The Youthful Folly Hexagram Says You’re in the Wrong Position to Seek

Last year, my younger cousin said he wanted to learn data analysis. He signed up for courses, bought books, and even got a bigger monitor. Three months later, I asked him how his studies were going. "Bro," he said, "I probably just don’t have the talent for it." I told him not to jump to conclusions about himself so fast—there’s a line in the Meng Hexagram that speaks exactly to this.

In the context of study, the Meng Hexagram is never about how smart you are. It’s about position: are you sitting around waiting for knowledge to come to you, or are you standing up to seek it out?

With the same brain, the right position makes things "click"; the wrong position makes all effort go to waste.

Meng is not absence—it’s blockage

The Meng Hexagram is Shan Shui Meng (Youthful Folly). The upper trigram is Gen (Keeping Still), represented by a mountain; the lower trigram is Kan (The Abysmal), represented by water.

The Xiang Commentary sums it up in one line: "A spring emerges beneath the mountain—this is the image of Meng."

The spring is at the foot of the mountain. The water is there, gushing out constantly. But it’s pinned under the mountain, so it can’t flow out, nor does it know where to go.

That’s what Meng means.

Many people interpret the character meng as "lacking"—lacking talent, lacking foundation, lacking brains. That’s not right. Meng means "having something, but it’s blocked."

Take the spring under the mountain: if you say there’s no water, it’s clearly gushing. If you say there’s water, it can’t even carve out a tiny gully.

So the key to the Meng Hexagram is never "adding more"—it’s "unblocking."

The Hexagram Judgment goes on to say: "亨。匪我求童蒙，童蒙求我。初筮告，再三渎，渎则不告。利贞。" (Success. It is not I who seek the young fool; the young fool seeks me. At the first divination I give him warning. If he asks a second or third time, that is importunity. If he is importunate, I give no more warning. It furthers to be correct.)

In plain terms: this can work out. But the teacher doesn’t chase the unenlightened student to teach them—the unenlightened student comes seeking the teacher. The first time they ask, I tell them. If they pester me with the same question over and over, that’s disrespectful, and I won’t answer anymore.

Notice the direction here: the teacher is passive, the learner is active.

Many people get the "seeking" part backwards

My cousin’s problem wasn’t his brains. He turned "studying" into "watching."

He saved twenty tutorials, watched the first ten minutes of each. He bought seven books, still in their plastic wrap. He had three learning websites open on his big monitor, clicking on them eight times a day for two minutes each.

Is that seeking? No.

That’s the posture of "knowledge coming to seek me"—I sit here, you all line up to come in, and I flip through whatever catches my eye.

The Meng Hexagram puts it bluntly: "The young fool seeks me." The word "seek" carries weight. To seek means you know what you’re missing, how badly you’re missing it, and what happens if you don’t get it.

I’ve seen this kind of misalignment so many times in study contexts. People sit at their desks, but their hearts are waiting for a moment of "being ignited." When it doesn’t come, they say they have no talent.

Put simply: it’s not lack of talent—it’s not even sitting at the table yet.

"初筮告" (First divination brings warning): ask the right question the first time

Many people gloss right over these three characters: "初筮告".

The first time you ask, there’s an art to it. Ask the wrong question, and the answer is useless.

I’ve heard so many questions like this: "Teacher, how should I improve myself?"

That question is impossible to answer. It’s so broad that any answer sounds perfunctory. If I say "read more books," you’ll think that’s obvious. If I say "find a good platform," you’ll say "where am I supposed to find one?"

How do people who know how to ask questions frame them?

I know a woman who works in operations. She asked: "I write three articles a day, but my readership is stuck at 2,000 and won’t go up. I’m not sure if it’s the titles that are bad, or the topic selection. Which one should I fix first?"

As soon as that question lands, the answer floats to the surface on its own.

Fix the topic selection first. No matter how catchy a title is, it can’t save a topic no one cares about.

"初筮告" doesn’t mean "you’ll get an answer the first time you ask." It means "the answer is only valuable if you ask the right question the first time."

In study, asking the right question is far more important than working hard. If you ask "why can’t I learn this?" you get self-doubt. If you ask "which step am I stuck on?" you get the next step.

"再三渎" (Repeated asking is importunity): asking the same thing over and over means you’re not actually learning

Du (渎) means disrespect. Why is repeated asking disrespectful?

Because you didn’t take the last answer seriously.

My cousin did this. He asked "where should I start learning?" three times.

The first time I said: "First master a few common Excel functions. Give yourself a week."

The second time he asked the same thing. I said, "Did you master the functions yet?" He said, "I haven’t started."

The third time he asked again.

The third time, I didn’t answer.

It wasn’t that I was impatient. It’s "再三渎，渎则不告"—by the third time you ask the same question, the answer isn’t with me anymore. It’s in your own hands.

In study, asking the same question over and over is the most hidden form of procrastination. It looks like seeking guidance, but it’s just spinning your wheels. The more you spin, the more you think you’re working hard.

"果行育德" (Decisive action nurtures virtue): the solution to Meng is to move

The Xiang Commentary has another four-character phrase: "君子以果行育德" (The superior person nurtures virtue through decisive action).

Guo xing (果行) means to act decisively. Yu de (育德) means to nurture gradually.

The spring under the mountain doesn’t flow out because you think it through—it flows out because it keeps gushing, until it washes the rocks away.

Many people get stuck on the "thinking it through" step in their studies. They insist on figuring out the whole system, the path, the methodology before they take their first step. But you only see the system clearly by walking it—not by standing outside the mountain staring at it.

I’ve summed up three types of "Meng" in study contexts, each with its own solution.

First type: you don’t know what you don’t know. This is true Meng. The solution is to find a reference point. Take an exam, take on a real task—let reality show you how far you have to go.

Second type: you know what you don’t know, but you don’t act. This is false Meng. The solution is to break the action down into steps so small they can’t fail. Not "study for two hours today," but "open the document today and write the first line of the formula." Small enough that you have no excuse to say no.

Third type: you know you should act, but you just keep asking questions. This is fake Meng. There’s only one solution: shut up and put in twenty hours of work first, then talk.

Three ways to judge the Meng Hexagram in study contexts

First: see if you can ask good questions. People who can’t ask specific questions usually haven’t even started.

Second: see if you’ve put the last answer to use. If you have, you’re moving forward. If you haven’t and you come back to ask again, you’re stuck in place.

Third: see if you have one thing you’ve "put twenty hours into." If not, you don’t have the right to talk about talent yet.

What happened later

My cousin sold his big monitor and got a small laptop instead. Every day after work, he sat at the kitchen table writing code for forty minutes, focusing on one thing only: writing code to run the company’s sales report. Just that one task, for two whole months.

In the third month, he texted me: "Bro, today I finished a job that used to take three hours in eight minutes with code."

I said, "You never lacked talent. You finally stood on the side of 'seeking'."

Remember these four characters from the Meng Hexagram: 童蒙求我 (The young fool seeks me).

It’s not about natural ability. It’s about whether you’re sitting outside the mountain waiting for water, or crouching by the spring, digging shovelful by shovelful.

The spring doesn’t recognize talent—it only recognizes the people who dig.