Pathfinder
Hexagram 60 Priorities
The model of the moment: Some instances call for spontaneity; others for careful deliberation. This is a time for the latter. Every day we each of us face a new raft of decisions. As the pace of world change accelerates, our daily list of duties in this regard lengthens, and the number of decisions involved grows. Decision-making can be a painfully difficult and time-consuming task. But there is a way to make the process easier and faster; by setting clear priorities in those areas demanding frequent judgment calls on your part. Having such a value system in place makes alternatives easier to weigh one against the other, and allows you to move more freely and confidently throughout your environment. The advantage comes from the fact that a single decision in regards to critical priorities can literally replace thousands of decisions in subsequent events. But how can such powerful value systems be defined? By learning, for a start. By reading everything you can, about every subject that catches your fancy. By discussing important issues with a wide range of associates. And, finally, by determining what all the extremes, the borderlines, the leading edges, the limitations of the various factors involved really are. What's the best case scenario for a certain trend in technology, if it's allowed to progress unimpeded by regulations? What's the worst? What's your own limits in accepting certain types of change to your society or environment? To a large extent, simply discovering all the limitations pertinent to an issue will serve to define your priorities regarding it. The course usually recommended for such times: Now is a time for organization and realization. Organization of your life, in regards to your query, and realization that you are about as effectual on the subject of your interest as a cloud of morning mist. Your significance to the situation is negligible, as you have done little constructive in this area. Perhaps you cannot; perhaps you will not. No matter. Unless this instance betrays only the most trivial of whims on your part, you have a need or desire to obtain real progress concerning this subject. Such progress will come only after you take note of your present limitations regarding it, and take concrete steps to address them. Architects who would build skyscrapers first note what the limits of their funds and other design criteria are. Thus does the skeleton of the building first take shape in conceptual form via a mapping of the limitations involved. Priorities serve to define what can and must be done. Whatever stage of your own process you find yourself at now, look to the limitations that define it for guidance in continuing.
Fixed (no changing lines);
This is a plateau process or event; the given model will hold true for an extended period of time. Attempts to manipulate events away from the present course could prove frustrating and fruitless, until destiny is satisfied. Consider the following as well as the above: The subject of your question is nebulous at this time. You have accomplished little in terms of defining or structuring it in any real way. Therefore, as its present status is doubtful, so too is its future. If you have yet to take a step in any direction, then you also have yet to choose a future to explore, with respect to this issue.
Changing Lines:
1
Naturally adapting to the limitations you encounter in your life can make many of your problems much easier to solve.
2
When the time is ripe, you should act. Hesitations and doubts in such an instance will bring only harm.
3
Remember that frugality is one way of providing for your own future, by saving for it. After retirement, for example, you may not have the health and energy to generate sufficient income to stave off hardship and humiliation. Savings from your frugal youth would then be a godsend.
4
Finding your own style of contentment in frugality can bring other benefits, such as improved health due to enhanced relaxation. It can also bring greater creative freedom to your life, as those who see their limitations most clearly can also see best how to make the most of what they have.
5
You could be surprised at how much you could grow to enjoy a frugal lifestyle. For economizing on unneeded things frees up resources for pursuing your dreams in many cases. This is how many successful small business people, novelists, and others get started. Because economizing can provide you more free time to do what you want, and more money to do it with, whether it's a ski trip to Colorado, or a computer system to write your first novel on. Too, the most effective influence you can have on others is by example. If you would teach another that certain disciplines are necessary for success, then you should prove it by way of your own life. Take up yourself the principles you espouse.
6
The need to economize is the rule in nature; not the exception. Witness the frequent bankruptcies of companies or individuals who fail at frugality. When we try to oppose this in our thoughts and actions, we go against nature itself, and so cannot win. This can only leave us frustrated and angry. Some poor souls become so fascinated with the lifestyles of certain of the wealthy that they begin to think such excesses are common, and much more desirable than their own personal circumstances. If such fascination deteriorates into obsession, it can drive the individuals so afflicted into a hard and bitter existence, spent in endless envy of others and a complete blindness to the good things in their own life. Eventually such attitudes can cause what good there is around such people to wither and die, leaving them trapped in the very hell they imagine themselves to occupy, after all. The love of their children may disappear. The relationships with their friends fall apart. And more. Thus, those who cannot free themselves from the delusions that excess is all and economy an abomination, are doomed to waste their lives in unhappiness.
When all lines are changing;
Structure is necessary for our existence, though it also brings with it certain limitations. The rigidity of the body's skeleton allows us to walk. But it also makes us vulnerable to breakage. If you cannot accept your own limitations, you can never taste of your own potential; for your limitations define what you can do. He who would not accept the limitations of a brittle skeleton, and therefore refused to use it, could never walk on his own two feet.