Hexagram 3: 屯

Chaos at initialization. Thunder below—your creative impulse, the thing that wants to exist. Water above—danger, the unknown, everything that can kill you. They meet turbulently. Flynn gets digitized into a system actively trying to kill him. Programs materialize through visible struggle. The blade of grass doesn't smoothly emerge—it forces itself through packed earth, and you can see the effort. That's what this looks like. Here's what the classical text says: Difficulty at the Beginning works supreme success. Not despite the difficulty. Through it. The chaos isn't a sign you're doing it wrong. It's the natural state of beginnings when creative force meets resistance. So here's what matters: don't try to force it alone, and don't expect smooth launch. The person who encounters difficulty at the beginning and thinks 'this means I should quit'—they're misunderstanding the nature of beginnings. The person who encounters difficulty and thinks 'I'll just push harder'—they're misunderstanding the nature of chaos. What works is systematic engagement with the actual problem, one connection at a time, with people who know things you don't. Flynn finds helpers. He doesn't try to solo the MCP. That's not weakness—that's understanding the pattern. The spring gushes forth chaotically, but it contains implicit order. Your job isn't to impose order from outside. It's to discover the order already present in the chaos, then work with it. The failure mode: giving up because it's hard (misunderstanding that difficulty is normal) or thrashing harder because you think force overcomes structure (misunderstanding that chaos has implicit order). Neither works. What works is persistent, intelligent engagement with reality as it actually is. The blade of grass doesn't force the earth. It just keeps growing.