There is an old Chinese story – I haven’t been able to find out for sure where it comes from or how old it really is (anyone?) – known as Sai Weng shi ma: the old man of the border loses his horse. You probably know it…
The old man has a horse and a son, and the neighbours think him very fortunate. Then one day his horse runs away, and the neighbours commiserate. ‘What bad luck!’ they say. ‘Maybe,’ says he.
Then the horse comes back, and with it comes a superb horse from across the border. This time the neighbours congratulate him on his good luck, but Sai Weng still just says, ‘Maybe’.
Then his son mounts the new horse, is thrown and breaks his leg. The neighbours gather round again: ‘Your son will be crippled: what terrible bad luck!’
‘Maybe,’ says Sai Weng.
Then the recruiters come round for the emperor’s army, and every able-bodied young man in the place is taken away – but the old man’s son is spared.
“What great good fortune!”
“Maybe…”
38, line 1:
‘Regrets vanish.
Lost horse, no running after it, it returns of itself.
See hateful people,
No mistake.’
This line points towards (or is motivated by) an attitude of Hexagram 64, Not Yet Across. It’s exactly what Sai Weng shows, the wise old fox: never committing himself to a position, always keeping his attitude wide open, never seeking ‘closure’. Like the Yi authors, he recognises that there is no such thing as an ‘ending’, happy or unhappy.
Maybe there is also an echo of his awareness at 35, 2? ‘Now prospering, now apprehensive…’ And it may be this same insight that is the only perspective that brings good fortune out of Arguing (at Hexagram 6, line 5).
This is good advice for how to live, always. Because it’s just when we think everything’s sorted out that it tends to go wrong, and just when we think everything’s over that they start to pick up.