Man, I never thought I’d be writing about the I Ching here. You guys know I usually stick to the heavy-duty stuff—servers, infrastructure, how to make a system fail gracefully. But sometimes, when the whole system crashes, you need a different kind of tool. Not a technical one, but a blunt, basic survival tool.
A few years ago, I poured everything I had, every cent, every 18-hour day, into this stupid big project. I mean, everything. I believed in it. Then, within three months, the funding vaporized, the key partners bailed, and the whole damn thing imploded. Not a gentle winding down. It was a spectacular, foundation-shaking collapse that left me owing money and looking at a pile of dust where my future used to be.
I was in this dark apartment, surrounded by monitors that were suddenly useless, feeling totally numb. I tried running the numbers, making contingency plans, looking for a logical way out. But there was no logic left. Every action I considered felt like punching the ocean. It was pure chaos.
That’s when I remembered the old copy of the I Ching sitting on my shelf. I had dismissed it for years as just philosophy, but I was desperate enough to try anything that wasn’t outright panic. I needed to know: what do you do when everything is actively falling apart?
Casting the Question: Stop Fighting the Fall
I grabbed the three old Chinese coins I used to use for practice and focused hard on the crisis. The question was simple and brutal: “Given this total collapse, what immediate action is required for survival?”
I tossed the coins six times, keeping a meticulous record of the lines. When I finished calculating the hexagram, the result slammed into me: Hexagram 23, Bo (剝), or Stripping Away. The image is a mountain resting on the earth, but five of the six lines are Yin—soft, passive, eroding forces—and the single solid Yang line is at the very top. It signifies the mountain falling apart, bit by bit, from the bottom up, until only the peak is left, ready to tumble.
I read the commentary, but honestly, you don’t need the fancy ancient text. The image itself screamed the message at me: The process of erosion is overwhelming and nearing completion. You cannot stop it.
Immediate Steps Taken Based on Hexagram 23
The core insight of 23 is that when the forces of stripping away are dominant, attempting forceful action is foolish. You don’t rebuild a mountain while it’s mid-collapse. You retreat, secure the vital essentials, and wait for the destruction to run its course. This forced me into a radical change of strategy. I stopped trying to fix the old project and started immediate damage control.
Here are the practical steps I executed immediately, driven by that single, terrifying hexagram:
- I slashed expenses to zero: The first practical step of “Stripping Away” is financial. I pulled every non-essential subscription, canceled every service, and moved into the smallest, cheapest living situation possible. I identified the bare foundational requirements (shelter, food, power) and protected those fiercely. Everything else was cut.
- I retreated from confrontation: I stopped arguing with the defunct partners and investors. 23 warns against fighting powerful forces of destruction; you’ll only be crushed faster. I answered necessary emails briefly and honestly, without emotion, and then went silent. I acknowledged the loss and accepted that the mountain had fallen.
- I defined the single surviving “seed”: The Hexagram 23 structure often implies that the final solid line (the one true thing) must be preserved. For me, that meant my core skills and health. I stopped working 18-hour days trying to resurrect the dead project. I focused that energy entirely on updating my portfolio and maintaining my mental stability. That was the only thing I was allowed to protect and nourish during the “winter.”
- I prepared for the inevitable reversal: The I Ching is cyclical. After the maximum stripping (23), comes the Receptive/Return (24). I recognized that while I couldn’t act now, I needed to be ready to act the moment the cycle turned. So I spent the subsequent weeks learning a new framework (Python/Django, since Go felt too painful to look at after that failure) while actively doing nothing constructive regarding the old mess. I just studied and waited.
That process—the radical, almost painful withdrawal—is what saved my sanity and my bank account from total annihilation. I stopped thinking I was smart enough to defy the cosmic bulldozer and admitted I was powerless. That moment of surrender, dictated by the pattern of Stripping Away, was the single most practical decision I could have made.
I emerged about three months later, financially bruised but mentally sharp, ready to start interviewing. I hadn’t lost my skills, just a huge amount of capital and ego. The lesson wasn’t about esoteric magic; it was about recognizing the moment of terminal collapse and having the discipline to follow the ancient, cold advice: When the mountain is falling, you step back and protect the smallest, most essential seed until the spring comes again.
It was brutal, ugly, and totally necessary.
