How to Adjust When Romantic Fortunes Are Unfavorable? The Ancients Explained the Breakthrough Strategy Thoroughly with One Hexagram

In the Northern Song Dynasty, there lived a scholar named Zhang Sheng. He was already twenty-five and still unmarried. Seeing his peers all had children, his mother was so anxious that she could barely eat. She dragged him to a local diviner to cast a hexagram about his romantic prospects for the year. The divination was performed at 11 PM, yielding the hexagram *Bo* (Mountain over Earth, "Peeling Away"), with the changing line resulting in the hexagram *Guan* (Wind over Earth, "Observation").

The diviner smiled at the hexagram and said, "It’s not that you have no romantic luck—you’ve been narrowing your own path." Zhang Sheng was bewildered. "I study at home every day and barely go out. What path are you talking about?"

"Look here," the diviner explained. "The *Bo* hexagram has mountain above and earth below. The mountain presses down on the earth, looking heavy as if all good things are being crushed. The *Sequence of Hexagrams* says, ‘Bo means peeling away; things cannot be exhausted forever.’ Put simply, you’re in a phase of ‘peeling away.’ Old relationships haven’t been fully cleared out, so of course new fate can’t find its way in."

Zhang Sheng slapped his thigh. That made sense! The marriage match arranged the year before had fallen through almost a year ago, yet he still occasionally took out the poems the girl had written, his heart tangled with unresolved feelings. How to face such a dilemma? The ancients never advocated forcing through hardship head-on—first, you figure out what needs to be "peeled away."

The most marvelous part of the *Bo* hexagram is the topmost yang line, which says: "A great fruit uneaten; the noble man gains a carriage." It means you’re clutching an uneaten fruit so tightly that your hands are too full to receive anything new. If you cling to old memories every day, it’s like stuffing your pockets full of old candy—where will you put the new candy when it comes?

"Now look at the resulting hexagram *Guan*, Wind over Earth. Wind blows across the land, sweeping through thousands of households, and suddenly your horizons broaden. The *Guan* hexagram speaks of ‘observing the glory of the state, which is favorable for serving as a guest to the king.’ Simply put, go out more, see more, and don’t trap yourself in the small world of your study."

Zhang Sheng scratched his head. "I’m a scholar. I’m either at the academy or at home. Where am I supposed to go and see?" The diviner replied, "Don’t you write well? The literary gathering in the neighboring county will be held next month. Go join in the fun—even if you just help copy invitations for people. How do you adjust when things aren’t going well? Not by forcing yourself to go on blind dates, but by changing your ‘environment’ first."

"You spend every day poring over the Four Books and Five Classics, and the only people you know are teachers and classmates. Where would romantic fate come from? The ‘guan’ in *Guan* means both observing and displaying—you have to let others see you, and you have to see others too. If you stay cooped up at home all the time, even if fate wanted to find you, it couldn’t locate your door number."

When it comes to solving life’s difficulties, the ancients’ logic was remarkably down-to-earth: first peel away the burdens, then broaden your horizons. The *Bo* hexagram is about subtraction—clearing out all the tangled,放不下, and tasteless yet hard-to-discard things from your heart. The *Guan* hexagram is about addition—seeing more, walking more, and connecting with more people. When your horizons widen, choices will naturally follow.

Half-believing, Zhang Sheng went home, stowed the old poetry manuscripts at the bottom of a chest, and truly went to the neighboring county to attend the literary gathering. There, he helped an elderly gentleman organize his poetry scrolls. Impressed by Zhang Sheng’s beautiful calligraphy and steady demeanor, the old man introduced his granddaughter to him shortly after. By the end of the year, Zhang Sheng had officially settled his marriage.

You see, when the ancients talked about divination, it was never about waiting for good luck to fall from the sky—it was about pointing you toward a direction for adjustment. Romance is like growing crops: you have to loosen the soil first, pull the weeds, then sow the seeds in the right place. Naturally, they will sprout in time. If the soil is all hard and compacted, yet you squat on the ridge every day worrying about why no seedlings are growing—isn’t that just wasting your effort?