Sometimes these columns take a great deal of thought and work, and other times they just write themselves. I sense this one will be the latter. I was in a therapy session the day before i wrote this (in late December 2022), when my therapist brought up the matter of the brain making forecasts and predictions, and how we are not required to listen to our amydgala’s warnings of trouble ahead.
I noted to my therapist that I had actually just written an essay on prognostications (more evidence that nearly any issue in life is applicable to a Montaigne essay and something I’ve already written on the subject, even if I’ve long forgotten it.) She said that she loved when synchronicities like that happen, and I agreed. And another such synchonicity is happening here, because I just so happened to use an I Ching reading yesterday to make a point about personal prognostications and ended up drawing Tun, which is all about retreat.
Looking back at this in September 2024, that I Ching reading strikes me, because I have a sense that my Reader is in retreat from me, which naturally raises fears in me that I’ve done something wrong. But why apply an old i Ching to this when I can conjure a new one.
My reading is one I rarely receive, 63, Chi Chi. My I Ching app describes it this way:
This hexagram indicates that the movement from chaos to order is complete. The time is extremely favorable and you are likely to enjoy much success as long as you heed the warning of Chi Chi: remain on guard against incorrect thoughts, attitudes, and actions, both in yourself and in others.
To be honest, it feels very weird to get such a positive reading, I don’t know what to make of it. So I consulted another I Ching text, which concluded:
In Chi Chi, everything is too perfect. When people find themselves in perfect situations, when they have achieved their goals, they tend to lose focus and drive. That is why this gua, Already Fulfilled, cannot end the I Ching.
Hmm, things don’t feel too perfect to me now, but maybe that’s good—perhaps I’m naturally on guard for the risks. Perhaps that’s the point.
Particulars will always be in motion. The version of me at the center of it all may have completed an unarticulated transformation. But it’s never a final transformation, just one cycle of change, the end of which begins another.
Now, getting back to that original 2022 I Ching reading about retreat … Constancy is the subject of this Montaigne essay, and retreat is often its opposite. The stoics would have us believe that a sage person should always stand firm in the face of danger and conflict, but Montaigne calls this out as a dangerous mistake:
Resolution and constancy do not lay down as a law that we may not protect ourselves, as far as it lies in our power to do so, from the ills and misfortunes which threaten us, nor consequently that we should not fear that they may surprise us. On the contrary, all honourable means of protecting oneself from evils are not only licit: they are laudable.
Montaigne then goes on to note numerous examples from military history when retreat was the correct tactical move, setting up armies for later victories. I must return to that I Ching quote from yesterday, making a nearly identical point:
Retreat is not the same thing as surrender, capitulation, or abandonment, which are desperate and unsatisfying measures. Neither is it characterized by a hardening into angry or punitive emotions. It is instead an acceptance and a choice: we calmly accept that the energies of the moment are against us, and we wisely choose to withdraw into the safety of stillness. In this dignified and balanced manner we protect ourselves from negative influences and arrive rested in a more beneficial hour.
Montaigne then applies this belief about constancy and retreat to human emotions, saying that a wise person cannot just shut emotions off. Many of Montaigne’s early essays go too far in embracing the stoic approach to emotion. For that reason, it’s a great relief (and sign of growth) to see him close his essay this way:
The Aristotelian sage is not exempt from the emotions: he moderates them.
As I mention across several essays, there’s a huge difference between moderating emotions, especially those than can affect others, and moderating values. We should be careful to keep in check anything that prioritizes personal feeling and expression over the liberty of others. But we should not be so quick to check our values, especially as they concern protecting other who cannot defend themselves.
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