Note: The video accompanying this article is excellent and well worth watching.
In previous comments, a young person eagerly expressed wanting to succeed and move up in life, but didn’t know how to go about it.
For this young person, Master Chi’s response was to first ask themselves one question: All this relentless effort you’re pouring out — who is it really for?
Is it truly for yourself?
If it were only for yourself, do you think you’d push this hard?
Don’t rush to answer that just yet.
As someone who has walked this road, Master Chi wants to share some real-life cases for your reference.
Because most of Master Chi’s circle runs in the unpredictable currents of the world — people of ambition and commerce — they often live freely once their careers find solid footing. The result? Divorce rates that run quite high.
Today, many articles on relationships, women’s empowerment, and inspirational content will tell you that divorce is no big deal — just start a new life and move on.
They’re not wrong. For those at the bottom, that’s genuinely true — because they have nothing to lose in the first place.
But if you have even the slightest hope — and I mean the slightest — of building something resembling a real career, then believe what I’m about to say: “Divorce can be absolutely devastating to a person’s path in life.”
Because divorce is not simply two people’s feelings falling apart. It is the severing of two people’s major responsibilities to each other. From that moment, each goes their own way — unburdened, unencumbered, traveling light.
For the vast majority of people in this world, traveling light is the most dangerous thing imaginable.
Because people who no longer carry burdens or responsibilities tend to fall deeply in love with freedom — and they can rarely find their way back to the right path.
For a man: if there is no family, no partner, no children, he has nothing to answer for. He need only satisfy his own desires.
For a woman: if there is no family, no partner, no children, she has no one to anchor her. She need only pursue her own interests.
And then what? The drive to push yourself beyond your natural limits simply disappears.
Of course, there are those who, even without family or partner or children, maintain complete self-discipline and ambition. But they are absolutely the minority of the minority.
For those people, Master Chi gives nothing but a thumbs-up — genuine respect.
But ordinary people? Without constraints, without responsibilities to shoulder, there is a 99% probability they become purposeless, drifting middle-aged souls who accomplish nothing.
Everyone chooses their own path. Ending up scraping by on a meager salary is a personal choice — there is nothing inherently wrong with it.
But are you truly at peace with that?
Here is the truth: the people of this world are not nearly as self-centered and calculating as some would have you believe.
Especially once you reach a certain age, you begin to realize that all your effort and striving may not have been for yourself at all.
Among Master Chi’s circle, those who were born single-mindedly chasing “success” from day one are actually quite rare.
Some came from poverty and simply refused to accept it — they fought back against fate and delivered a decisive counter-strike.
They couldn’t bear the thought of their children and parents continuing to endure a life of hardship.
Some came from privilege, but when the family faced turbulence and the older generation grew too frail to hold things together, they had no choice but to step forward.
They refused to watch their family legacy be swept away — so they had to hold up the collapsing pillar and pull the situation back from the edge.
This is exactly why I tell young people: before you commit to the struggle, first give yourself a reason to struggle.
Only when you’ve found that reason will you possess relentless fighting spirit and an unbreakable will. With your partner, your children, your parents standing behind you — how could you even think of retreating?
It is precisely because there is someone at your back, because retreat is not an option, that you can endure the storms and crushing weight of life, hold your ground, and ultimately watch the clouds part to reveal clear sky.
Ask your parents. Ask your partner. Ask yourself — if not for the people you love, who would push themselves this hard?
Remember this: the people who love you, and the people you love, are precisely the wellspring of strength that allows an ordinary person to keep going.
Just as in destiny reading, the Palace of Career faces the Palace of Marriage, and the Palace of Home faces the Palace of Children (the BaZi chart’s twelve life palaces map worldly achievement directly against the bonds of family) — every height of worldly gain ultimately rests upon love for those closest to you.
So many principles, so many stories — and yet nothing reaches the heart like a single song.
This song — “The Brightest Star in the Night Sky” by Escape Plan — is a gift to you, wandering and uncertain. May you find the star that belongs to your life.
I would rather hold all the pain inside than forget the courage your eyes gave me to believe again to cross through all the lies and hold you close whenever I cannot find a reason to exist whenever I am lost in the darkness of night brightest star in the night sky please light my way forward