This morning, a friend posed a thoughtful question: “Master Chi, do you think the days ahead will actually improve?”
He was asking against the backdrop of a world in quiet turbulence — shifting global conditions, the Wagner leader’s death, Japan’s mass discharge of radioactive water. Something in him felt unsettled. Like life had become impossible to carry forward.
My first instinct was to brush it off: Don’t stress yourself out. Don’t overthink it. But that felt wrong. So instead, I wrote something longer. Might as well share it here.
I’ve always encouraged the people around me to read history.
When you truly understand history, you develop what I’d call a “God’s-eye view” — a vast, elevated perspective from which you can see the currents of the age with far greater clarity. History also naturally cultivates an international outlook. You begin to understand, with real fluency, what the rest of the world actually looks like right now.
I’ll say this plainly — no arrogance intended, no putting others down — but once you look, you’ll understand: in this year of 2023, there is no place on earth where the people can honestly say, “Ha! The whole world is struggling, but we alone are the chosen ones — just lying back and winning.”
If you’re skeptical, information is everywhere. Go learn about the daily life of an ordinary person in any country you choose. What you’ll find, I promise, is this: different skin, different languages, different cities — but the same quiet pressure in the chest. The same sense of heaviness.
(If there are mainstream places where people are genuinely living it up, by all means, broaden my horizons. The UAE and Monaco, of course, are their own story.)
I understand where your stress is coming from.
Money is harder to earn. Opportunities outside feel scarce. I’m not demanding you grind harder or push through — I just think there’s a natural rhythm to the times that we’d do well to follow. When money flows easily, don’t miss the wave. When it doesn’t, don’t exhaust yourself fighting the current.
Right now, honestly? It’s a hard season. What can you do?
And yet — even so — if we’re being fair, the quality of life most of us experience today still surpasses any era that came before. It’s just that history fades, and we forget.
The truth is, you’ll come to see this yourself: every generation has its defining theme.
Ours? Full bellies, warm clothes, material security — but relentless competition (neijuan), a mind full of worries, small daily joys, and a foggy sense of the future.
Is that so terrible? Compared to what came before, it really isn’t.
There’s a Buddhist saying I love:
十方空无异，众生起分别 “In all directions, the emptiness is the same — it is the minds of sentient beings that create distinctions.”
Strip away the surface, and everyone’s life is more or less the same scattered mess of feathers on the floor (yi di ji mao — the everyday chaos and small indignities of living). What differs is only the lens each person brings to it.
Some people find a way to be fully present in each moment. Others spend those same moments worrying about what hasn’t happened yet.
Do I have advice? Not really.
Only this: learn to recognize the right moment to act — and learn, equally, to appreciate what you already have when the moment calls for that instead.
Loving life has never been a sin. 🤗☀️