My husband and I go out on the back lawn when the weather’s good enough, and play badminton.
Let’s see… David’s six feet tall, lean and wiry and a natural athlete; I’m five foot two, about two stone overweight, and hopelessly uncoordinated – you know the one who can’t even catch a netball and who’s always picked last for the team? That was me.
Who do you suppose tends to win?
Right. Though lately I haven’t done so badly – I gather eight points or so by the time he has his fifteen (the winning score), and the games take a decent length of time. I’ve even felt I was improving. (I used to be three stone overweight…)
Then the other day, as we go out, he asks gently,
“Would you like me to tell you what you’re doing wrong?”
So of course I say “yes”, and receive some genuinely helpful coaching, and then we play. The first game is over bewilderingly fast, and I’ve managed just 4 points. The next two are if possible even faster, and I get a total of three points between them. I don’t remember feeling this hopeless at sport for about twenty years.
Afterwards I asked the I Ching what happened, expecting to hear something about beliefs and self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead I received Hexagram 19, Nearing, with no changing lines.
‘Nearing.
Creating success from the source, harvest in constancy.
Reaching an end in the eighth month means a pitfall.’
The ‘eighth month’ is much interpreted with much diversity, but the key to it for me is that it’s harvest month.
Hexagram 19 is a rising trend, creative force reaching out towards its realisation. It’s natural to see something growing and focus on the upcoming moment of harvest. But the I Ching says that ‘ending’ here means misfortune. Sometimes this is advice to look beyond the moment of harvest, not to neglect the time of maturation and reflection that follows. More often, it’s a warning to allow a rising trend to continue without focussing on ‘having something to show for it.’
I’ve seen this hexagram a couple of times when I divine about professional tennis matches. Typically it corresponds to someone who’s doing well, reaches the final rounds on a surge of brilliance, but doesn’t quite peak at the right moment. If your inner time is that of hexagram 19, and outwardly it’s time to produce results, you’ll probably suffer from the mismatch.
So with this reminder from the I Ching, and now I’ve had some time to digest David’s ‘tireless teaching and reflecting’, I’m starting to enjoy my ‘rising trend’ again. The games are getting longer, and my scores even teeter on the brink of double figures. Whatever next? (The voice of experience says he’ll produce an effortless surge in skill and open a clear 12-point margin again. He’s like that…)