Lady Meng Jiang Seeks Her Husband
Inauspicious
The poem
Original: 天边消息实难思 / 切莫多心望强求 / 若把石头磨作镜 / 曾知枉费己功夫
The story
Under the First Emperor, Meng Jiang's husband was seized on their wedding night to build the Great Wall. She carried winter clothes a thousand miles and arrived to learn he was dead and buried beneath the wall. She wept until a section of it collapsed, and identified his bones among the dead by letting her blood fall on them.
What it means
The image is keeping to the ordinary and staying quiet: guard your own place and it goes well. The news from far off makes no sense, and this is no time to force the matter out of private longing. Grinding a stone to make a mirror never produces a reflection, however long you grind. The lot says something hard: the effort you are making rests on a premise that does not hold, so redoubling it only doubles the loss. Rather than devising more schemes, hold your position, do good, repent, and change the fortune rather than the fact.
By area of life
Wealth
Managing money brings none; the more you do the more you lose. Better not to pursue it and to keep your reserves intact.
Love
This attachment is not yours, and private insistence will not obtain it. Let the wish go rather than spending yourself on it.
Work
Effort brings no result, which suggests older debts at work. Good deeds and repentance change the fortune; grinding on in place only exhausts you.
Health
This illness resists treatment and worsens with each attempt. Sincere repentance and inner work will do more than another change of medicine.
Travel
The wish to build a life elsewhere is good, but the timing does not support it. Stay where you are rather than gambling abroad.
Advice
A stone will not become a mirror, so put this down and spend the effort on changing your luck instead.