Thanks to a friend’s account, Master Chi learned today of a deeply disturbing news report. The incident itself is straightforward enough: a 19-year-old college student, after an explosive confrontation with his parents at home — compounded by long-standing tensions with classmates, teachers, and dormitory staff at school — finally reached his breaking point on the afternoon of March 15th. He grabbed a knife, rushed downstairs, and seriously wounded an innocent 2-year-old girl. (Whether her life is in danger remains unclear at the time of writing — please refer to the latest news coverage for confirmation.)
What makes this most repugnant, according to eyewitnesses at the scene, was that throughout the attack, the student kept screaming: “I am not weak! I am taking revenge on society!”
And with that, the core contradiction becomes unmistakably clear: he was, in fact, exactly the kind of helpless weakling he refused to be. When faced with the hostile energy that society had sent his way, he lacked both the wisdom and the breadth of character to absorb and transform it. The result — he dove headfirst into blind fury and became a hysterical criminal.
Now, Master Chi firmly believes that if you’re calm enough to be reading this right now, you are not that kind of weakling. But I am equally certain that in your daily life, you too are surrounded at every turn by various forms of hostility from the world around you.
Perhaps you were born with a generous spirit and can simply tune out the noise like so many buzzing flies. Or perhaps you’ve developed enough capability that lesser people fear you and dare not speak out of turn. Or maybe your temperament is so even-keeled that others simply find nothing in you worth criticizing.
But here’s the truth: all of this only holds while you remain in a relatively low position.
The moment you lift your head and accomplish something — the moment your seat rises even slightly — rest assured, absolute perfection becomes impossible. Rumors, some unintentional and some quite deliberate, will begin to wear at you. Every word you say becomes ammunition for someone to defame or attack you. Every statement you make becomes raw material for others to twist out of context.
Almost everyone who has achieved even modest success in their career knows this feeling intimately. It is precisely why those who rise higher become increasingly careful with their words.
But Master Chi has three pieces of advice to offer you today — advice you will almost certainly need, especially if you’ve decided you want to build something meaningful in the future.
First: Never forget that great renown always walks hand in hand with infamy.
In this life, we are destined to be entangled with all manner of things — reputation included. To this day, I have genuinely never seen anyone who achieved real success without at least a few petty people whispering poison behind their backs. And honestly, it makes sense. There will always be those who appreciate and admire you — and equally, those who hold you in contempt and stand in opposition to you. This will not change no matter how carefully or considerately you conduct yourself.
Petty, small-minded people have always existed and always will — just as mosquitoes and pests have always plagued the world. For such people, the greatest pleasure in their daily lives is gathering behind closed doors to gossip, flatter one another, and heap the most vicious verbal abuse on those they could never hope to match.
There was a time when Master Chi thought such talk simply wasn’t worth acknowledging. But I’ve come to believe that attitude does little good for many younger people. Besides, we are not ostriches — much of the cold criticism life throws at you should be faced head-on. And it is precisely because you face it directly that you will benefit from it for the rest of your life.
The most important benefit? Their words and behavior will make you understand, deeply and viscerally, that there is truly no absolute equality between people in this world — especially when it comes to life pattern (格局) and breadth of character. In that moment, their hostility becomes an inexhaustible source of motivation, a daily reminder to never sink to the level of those people.
In plain terms: “No matter how little I’ve got going for me, I refuse to end up in that pile with them.”
Many public figures and entertainers understand this instinctively. Most are not terrible people, but because tall trees catch the wind, they cannot escape public gossip and rumors. So their mindset has long since settled into something like: “Let the small-minded spray their venom. I’ll just keep doing what I do.”
The hostility around you will make you stronger — and will transform into relentless fuel for your drive.
Second: When you realize that the people around you are saturated with hostility and all too eager to see you fail, you will paradoxically become sharper and more guarded than ever — and you will instinctively draw inward and go quiet.
And rightly so. As the old saying goes: one is born from hardship and dies in comfort. Master Chi has personally witnessed several individuals who, after their initial rise to prominence, genuinely forgot who they were. Meanwhile, those who walked every day on a knife’s edge of crisis were the ones with the presence of mind to plan every advance and retreat, always securing a safe exit. In the end, the ones who got out whole were precisely those people.
If life grants you three seasons of spring, it will also send you through a bone-chilling March. Crisis, like most things in life, is something you can master with enough exposure. But if you’ve walked a path where only flattery reaches your ears and criticism never does, you will eventually lose all sensitivity to approaching danger. The result? The most lethal strike will come aimed straight at your heart, and you will have no capacity to defend yourself whatsoever.
This is also why, in the eyes of many lower-tier people, they can never quite understand why successful leaders — especially those who operate at the highest levels — always seem to surround themselves with a mix of the loyal and the suspect, the straightforward and the cunning.
What they don’t understand is this: for anyone at the helm, hearing pleasant words is the easiest thing in the world. But pleasant words are also the most deceptive and misleading. Which is why a true leader must cultivate the mind and the bearing to listen to all voices — from every interest group and every walk of life — and extract the genuine signal hidden within the noise. Even words laced with malice and mockery must be heard, and often heard more carefully than the praise.
Only then will you discover that flattery is almost always gilded on the outside and hollow within — while harsh words, from start to finish, are the bitter medicine you actually need.
I mean this seriously: Master Chi has received no small amount of malicious criticism over the years, and looking back on it now, I find it genuinely interesting — and genuinely instructive.
The hostility around you, then, will sharpen your vigilance and your caution — allowing you to sidestep countless disasters.
As for the third and most important point — it is paradoxically the simplest to state:
Good fortune and hostile energy are both indispensable companions on life’s journey.
Many of the resentments that feel impossible to let go of right now will ultimately teach you where the floor of human life lies. And many of the moments of joy that light up your face will teach you where the peaks are.
Only by living through the rises and falls, the blessings and the hostility, will you develop a clear and felt sense of where the boundaries of a human life truly lie. From that point on, joy will no longer overflow from your brows, and anger will no longer spill from your lips. Emotion will hold no power over you.
Because you will understand: this is simply the nature of human goodness and wickedness. It is only what it is.
So remember this: to move through life’s storms unshaken, you must first know both fortune and hostility in full.
Only from that foundation can you truly develop the heart and the audacity to place your bets at the real high-stakes tables of life. Without it, this remains a fatal and irreparable gap in your life pattern — and no matter how favorable your fortune (运势) may be in the future, you will eventually crumble from within.