Student Question:
Master Chi, hello. I hope you’ll forgive me for writing to you directly like this.
After reading so many of your articles, I often find myself sinking into a deep sense of defeat — disappointed by what I’ve come to understand about human nature, frustrated by how clearly I can see through society, and overwhelmed by how little natural ability I seem to possess.
I know myself well enough to admit this: I am not the kind of gifted, talented, perceptive young person you write about. My destiny chart is almost certainly the face of someone utterly unremarkable — one face among millions. So I have just one question: Is someone like me truly destined to be used, controlled, and cast aside? To live a life of quiet suffering with nothing to show for it? Am I really incapable of happiness?
I imagine this question is a nuisance to you, but I also believe it’s the question many people are silently carrying. I hope for a reply, and I’m grateful.
Master Chi’s Response:
Hello, dear young person.
Let me give you the answer you’re looking for — directly and clearly: Happiness has always been closest to ordinary people.
Only those who are ordinary have the time and energy to fully experience every beautiful, meaningful moment their life has to offer. As for achievement, status, fame, and wealth — yes, they do tend to belong to those with exceptional ability. That much is undeniable. But those things are also a heavy, grinding burden, and they ultimately cost their owners countless precious joys.
This is why, every time I sit down to read someone’s life pattern (格局), I fall into my own kind of doubt: Should I point you toward the most profitable path of wealth and power? Or should I point you toward an ordinary but genuinely happy life? As the old saying goes — loyalty and filial piety rarely coexist; wealth and good fortune seldom arrive together. To choose one is to let go of the other. There is rarely a way to have both.
Now, if you ask me what the most wonderful kind of life looks like in my eyes — it is a life lived seriously but without force.
Yes, just those two things: “seriously” and “without force.”
Master yourself to these two principles, and trust me — you may never become a billionaire whose name echoes across the land, nor a feared power broker who commands a room. But everything that is rightfully yours — your wealth, your marriage, your friendships, your family, your pleasures, your happiness — none of it will be missing.
Take your career, for instance. “Seriously but without force” means using yourself as your own benchmark, every single day, and giving a solid eighty percent. Not dragging yourself down because everyone around you is slacking. Not burning yourself out because everyone around you has been injected with ambition. Simply holding your own standard — “Not bad. I handled that carefully and responsibly” — and leaving it at that.
Do only this, and invisible progress will begin to accumulate inside you. Three years from now, you will naturally have the capital and the strength to take the next step. Don’t worry whether that step looks good or bad. Just take it. Repeat the cycle. How could your career possibly fail to grow?
Now, let’s talk about love — because this has become one of the great struggles of our time. So many people expect their partner to give everything, while they themselves are afraid to be the first to reach out. Don’t be one of them.
I have encountered many truly harmonious families over the years. Every single one of them is marked by the same thing: two people who genuinely and wholeheartedly love each other — people who chose their partner and made a real commitment to care for and protect them as their most trusted companion in life.
None of them are like those foolish people who listen to outside gossip and try to use schemes and manipulation to “tame” their partner. What could have been touched by love and sincerity gets twisted into something sour and cold. The result, naturally, is heartbreak.
If you can honestly practice just these two things — in your career and in your love life — then the foundation of your life is secure. Even when storms come, they will be no more than a brief, manageable ache.
Yes, your life will certainly have its share of difficult passages. From the perspective of destiny reading, no matter how you live, the hardships that are yours to endure cannot be avoided. But here is what I can say with confidence: whenever you cross one of those thresholds, you will find your way back to the rhythm of normal life — and quickly.
Because in this world, everyone experiences their own rise and fall. Running into adversity is nothing worth dwelling on. What matters is whether you have the mindset and the openness of heart to pass through it with a smile.
Do not, under any circumstances, add unnecessary drama to your own story. Do not cast yourself as the most pitiful soul in a cold and desolate world. Instead, work to understand this clearly: the world is not maliciously targeting you — you simply walked into a place that was never meant to welcome you. Given that, dust yourself off and walk away. The world is vast. Are you really going to worry there’s no place in it for you?
Walk seriously. Live seriously. Do each task in front of you — big or small — with full attention.
Don’t force yourself. Don’t manufacture drama. Don’t deliberately let yourself drown in grief and suffering.
If your career is stable, your love is fulfilling, and your heart is warm and open — tell me, how could you possibly not be happy? If you wanted to be truly miserable under those conditions, it would actually take considerable effort on your part. That’s what people mean when they say someone is their own worst enemy.
Finally, let me offer you a little encouragement — and share a small insight I’ve distilled after reading countless destiny charts:
There will come a time for every one of us when we close our eyes for the last time. None of us escape it. Some people choose, before that moment, to make a great noise in the world and leave behind proof that they once existed. Others simply treat this life as a journey, and quietly savor its beauty and happiness.
Neither way of living is superior to the other. Just as a handful of earth makes no distinction between us.
So — accept your ordinariness with grace. Hold fast to being serious without forcing it. After that, you’ll find that the happiness in your daily life becomes richer and more fragrant with time, and you yourself will grow more and more at ease within it.
I, Master Chi, wish every one of my brothers and sisters this: may you set down the weight of fame and achievement, and embrace the happiness and ordinariness that is rightfully yours.
Truly — sometimes, don’t be so hard on yourself.