I used to never understand why the last hexagram of the I Ching is “Wei Ji” (Wei Ji).

The sixty-four hexagrams, starting with Qian (乾). “The movement of heaven is ever vigorous; thus the superior person makes himself strong and untiring”—that’s a pure, upward creative momentum. Through evolution all the way to the sixty-third hexagram, Ji Ji (Ji Ji)—water and fire blending, each thing and affair finding its proper place, perfectly complete and fulfilled. In theory, this should be the endpoint. But somehow there is still one more hexagram after it, called Wei Ji. Fire is over water—completely misaligned, unable to complete the crossing. The whole book doesn’t end with a triumphant finale; it stops abruptly with an action suspended in uncertainty.
Why did the ancients arrange it this way? I thought about it for a long time.
Then I suddenly found something amusing. In our lives, from clueless youth through various learning and then into society—by rights, this learning process should have already gone through a full circle perfectly. But once you finish learning and step into society, it’s a brand-new beginning. Then after you complete your work flawlessly, you’ll encounter love again, get married, and start a family. After starting a family and building a life, you then spend time nurturing the next generation. Even if you do everything you possibly can, it’s still “Wei Ji”—you must start over again for the goals of the next generation.
At that moment, I suddenly understood: the opening Qian hexagram is actually the endpoint; the final Wei Ji is actually the starting point. Because when you begin a new stretch of road, it means you’ve already finished one stretch; when you finish that one stretch, it means the next stretch must begin.
This cycle doesn’t change based on any will, unless it is completely extinguished.
This is the objective, inevitable law of all life and all matter. Once I figured this out, I found that this logic can dissolve a lot of worries.
For example, success and failure.
We often set success and failure in opposition, cutting life into two halves: one half the joy of success, the other the pain of failure. But if you look at it within this cycle, failure isn’t really that you did something wrong—it’s the system telling you: this form of fulfillment has ended, and it’s time to move into the next form. Failure isn’t a negation of you; it’s a signal to turn.
And success? Success isn’t a prize at the end either. It’s that you’ve reached some Qian hexagram—but if you cling to it, that’s “the excessive dragon has regrets.” The true meaning of success is to provide you with the capital and momentum to initiate the next Wei Ji stage.
It’s not meant to make you stop and enjoy; it gives you the ability to start the next stretch of road.
As the saying goes, “Failure is the mother of success.” It sounds simple. But the underlying logic is this: success and failure are not opposites in the first place; they are different stages of the same cycle. Just like the hexagram text of Ji Ji, which begins with “First auspicious, ends in disorder”—the moment everything is complete, confusion and new changes already begin at the same time. And the Wei Ji hexagram, which seems like chaos without being sorted, actually contains the greatest potential—everything is yet to be thriving.
Laozi said, “What exists generates what is non-existent; difficulty and ease complete each other; length and shortness define each other; high and low incline toward each other.” Success and failure are just such a relationship of mutual generation. It’s not a timeline order where failure comes first and then success; rather, failure itself contains the seed of success, and success itself already holds the sprout of failure. Viewing success and failure as opposites is an artificial division made by people. Seen within the overall cycle, they are originally one and the same.