易经里有”四大难卦”的说法：屯、困、坎、蹇。我 24 年刚开始算卦的时候，经常算到蹇。

蹇卦上卦为水，下卦为山。在古人眼里，水代表”险”——深浅未知，一脚下去可能就丧命；山是艮卦，艮为止，又大又重，走不动。外部环境危机重重，自己又迈不开腿，做什么事自然都困难。“蹇”这个字在文言文里本身就是跛、行走困难、艰难困苦的意思。

后来我发现，不只是我。我帮朋友算卦，他们刚开始的时候也常常算到蹇。

现在回头想，这其实有道理。人会想到要算一卦，多半是心里有执念。而执念之所以是执念，往往是因为天时地利人和都不在你这边——本来就是很困难的事，所以你才会想求一个答案。一算，就是屯、困、坎、蹇。

但我觉得算到蹇卦是好事，因为它是思考的起点。

做 research 都讲究带着问题去做，卦也一样。算到蹇的人多多少少都不死心，会再去观察：这事到底是不是真的那么难？难在哪里？

有一种说法是算命会让人产生心理暗示——本来不是真的，被你想着想着就成真了。我觉得这是因为”命”太大了，大到什么都有，有好有坏。如果你只盯着不好的看，慢慢地眼里就只剩不好的了。

但卦不一样。卦的事情都很小，足够小到你可以花时间去细心观察，慢慢就能找到规律：为什么这件事难，为什么那件事顺。

这样你就能慢慢摸到自己能做的事的边界，做出 known decisions。很多事情不是算到凶或蹇就不能做，而是可以提前去考虑相应的风险。

所有事情都有风险，重点在于怎么化解它。

In the I-Ching, there is a concept of the “four difficult hexagrams”: Zhūn, Kùn, Kǎn, and Jiǎn. When I first started divining in 2024, I kept getting Jiǎn.

Hexagram Jiǎn has water above and mountain below. To the ancients, water meant danger — you never know the depth, and one wrong step could be fatal. Mountain is the Gèn trigram: Gèn means stillness, something massive and immovable. When the world outside is perilous and your own legs won’t move, everything naturally becomes difficult. The character 蹇 in classical Chinese literally means to limp, to walk with difficulty — hardship and obstruction.

Later I found it wasn’t just me. When I read hexagrams for friends, they too would often get Jiǎn at the beginning.

Looking back now, it makes sense. When someone thinks to cast a hexagram, it’s usually because something is weighing on their mind — a fixation. And a fixation is a fixation precisely because timing, circumstance, and conditions are all working against you — it was already a difficult thing, which is why you went looking for an answer. Cast the coins, and out come Zhūn, Kùn, Kǎn, Jiǎn.

But I think getting Jiǎn is a good thing, because it is where thinking begins.

Good research starts with a question, and hexagrams work the same way. People who draw Jiǎn are, at some level, not ready to give up. They go back and observe: is this really as hard as it seems? Where exactly is the difficulty?

There is a common claim that fortune-telling creates self-fulfilling prophecies — things that weren’t true become true because you kept dwelling on them. I think this is because “fate” is too large — so large it contains everything, good and bad alike. If you only fixate on the bad parts, soon enough that’s all you can see.

But hexagrams are different. The matters they address are small — small enough that you can take the time to observe carefully, and gradually you begin to see patterns: why this thing was hard, why that thing went smoothly.

This way you slowly feel out the boundaries of what you can do, and start making known decisions. Many things aren’t about drawing a bad omen and then not doing them — it’s about considering the risks in advance. Everything carries risk. What matters is how you navigate it.