Life is unpredictable

Good thing can easily turn into bad thing! Chinese wisdom always warns Chinese to be aware of pitfalls and to be humble in life.

On New Year Day, the Air Force chief of Taiwan was organising a wedding celebration for his son. It was attended by the Defence Minister and all senior military officers. A happy and honourable day for the wedding couple in deed!

Based on tradition, Air Force personnel will assist in preparation of the wedding party. However, this routine and bad tradition turned into a political issue and caused a demotion for the Air Force chief.

If we look at if from the Yi Jing perspective, it really is not a surprise. Yi Jing is advising talented people, especially those in power, to avoid making mistakes. A high ranking officer, with the potential to take over as the next Chief of General Staff (CGS) of the Taiwan defence force, the Air Force chief should learn to be humble and to be in alert of any possible conflict of interest in the eyes of the public.

Unfortunately, not only he did not stop the bad habit, he continued to allow his subordinates to draw up the strategic plan for the wedding. He even agreed to prepare the wedding party like a war plan with standard military operations procedures. He did not prevent this bad habit but continue to let it be. By Taiwan military tradition and logic, subordinates are allowed to assist superiors in celebration preparations, further other previous officers also practiced the same, so there is no reason to stop the Air Force chief to do the same. Bad luck to him, there are several weak points that he failed observe, in particular, timing, position and situation. These factors are highly stressed by Yi Jing.

Failure to observe Timing: Very soon, there will be a replacement for the Chief of General Staff (CGS) in the Taiwan defence force. By rotation, the CGS will have to come from the air force this time. Being the chief of air force, it is highly possible he will take over the CGS if he has made no mistake. If he has turned the wedding into a low key event, or even postpone the event to a later date, he would have change his “timing” and be in a favourable position.

Failure to observe Position: He had a good position until New Year Day. Being the most senior officer in the air force, quite naturally he will take over the post of CGS. But like the commercial world, other air force commanders are also aiming for the position of CGS. Even he has showed no strong desire to be CGS, other ambitious air force commanders may see him as an obstacle and knocking down the most qualified one, they will have the chance to move up. His “position” changed after the wedding party.

Failure to observer Situation: Since Ma Ying-jeou took over as President in 2008; he wanted to present a clean government. Even the Air Force chief had done nothing wrong as the subordinates were volunteering their services and he just kept the tradition of the military. But the political impact is very different. Perhaps, Chen Shui-bian might allow such a behaviour but certainly not Ma Ying-jeou. He needs to adjust to the changed “situation”.

To be humble
Out of the 64 hexagrams in the Yi Jing, only 1 hexagram (Humble Gua) is good in every (broken and unbroken lines) prediction. Humble Gua will bring luck and benefit to the person who draws it. However, all the guidance principles and instruction for Humble Gua are to be humble. Without practising humble, luck and benefit will be gone. This shows the importance of humility. Again, he is too proud to hold a luxury wedding party.

To be careful from start to end
Laozi even goes further to explain the importance of consistence of doing thing. Besides humility, to achieve success we have to be careful in every step from the beginning until the end. This is especially true that the last few steps are as importance as the first few steps. Many people fail at the end or half way because they do not practice consistency. They have relaxed themselves or lost their concentration and believe that success is within their reach in just a few steps away. It is not easy not to hold a grand party for our loved one’s wedding party but to achieve the final success, you will need to consider the timing, position, and situation.

Life is unpredictable as what the air force chief had experienced. But the Chinese wisdom is always there to remind us and unfortunately, we keep on forgetting the reminder!