HEXAGRAM 1, THE CREATIVE LINE 2 SNITCH!

 

I had been staying in a small, pleasant expat resort. There was a guy called George from California living there too. I knew him a bit; he seemed nice enough, but he was a bit crazy—sort of bipolar crazy. This didn’t seem to be too serious, though. When he told me he was moving into the bungalow next to mine, I casually asked the I Ching about it.

Then he moved in, and things got very strange indeed. He started having massive quarrels on his own. I thought he was raving at someone on the phone at first. Then I realized he was fighting with his Alexa robot player. He yelled vile expletives and threatened to call its supervisors. He accused it of defrauding him and breaching the contract, and this went on for hours. It was getting late, and I went to try to calm him down, and that seemed to work, but later, in the small hours, he started again! This time, when I went over to talk to him, he started attacking me verbally, saying the same things he had said to Alexa.

The final straw came when he threatened to call the police on me, and as I am a weed smoker living in a country with harsh penalties, I took this seriously. He had gone too far, and I got very angry and lectured him harshly on his deplorable behavior. He was shocked by my vehemence and did quiet down for some days. There was one more episode, though. This was basically the same as the last, but this time I put up with it that night and waited to attack until the morning. I wanted to catch him by surprise, and I felt that if I remonstrated with him at night, he would have expected it and would have his guard up. In the morning. I rise early and was wide awake when he was just stumbling out of his room. He launched a volley of moral remonstration at him in his half-awake state, and he was unable to resist. This did the trick, and he completely stopped and lived quietly ever since (over six months). Things were a bit strained for a while, and then we went back to normal neighborly relations without any mention of the trouble before. I think I did him a favor, as if he carried on with that kind of behavior, he would have ended up in an asylum. As it is, he is living peacefully. The trick was giving him a profound shock.

Hexagram text Wilhelm/Baynes: The Creative Works sublime success, furthering through perseverance

Success was achieved with considerable effort, but it required a mixture of patience, action, and restraint. It certainly was not easy at all, though, and in fact, it taxed me to the limit of my ability to deal with it.