A BaZi afficienado said something interesting to me in an email today:

“I believe every chart can be made a winner if only people aligned it the right way and have a looser definition of what is “their success”

I just saw a meta film this week – ‘The Words’ so I am in something of meta-philosophical mode. So this post might not be too heavy on technicals and involve a lot of waxing lyrical on my part. (we will return to regular programming on the US election next week).

At first glance, when I looked at the remark, I thought – yes, that’s a good way to look at all things BaZi.

And then I thought about it for about 5 more seconds and realised that actually, this is what I would term a cop out statement (nothing personal to the person who wrote that to me – it’s his opinion).

The problem with this statement within the context of BaZi is it is the right way to look at things but it is not the way things are.

We like to think in this modern world that success is personalised and individualised (I blame Gen Y). That there is no real standard of success and succes is what you make not just off it, but what it should be. The reality however is that we have to have definitions of success because otherwise, success would have no meaning.

A person can only be defined as a success in the light of other people or those who have failed. You can’t be a winner, if there are no losers. Therefore, winning, success, achievement is all by necessity, defined in some measure, by their polar opposites – losing, failure, non-achievement.

By arguing that everyone can be a winner as long as they carefully define success with the limitations of their chart, that is like saying, anyone can pass an exam, as long as they can say, failure is okay.

Maybe it’s because we live in this world where everyone is told they have potential and all they have to do is unlock that potential. For some reason, I actually really dislike that idea and notion because potential implies it is something meaningful and related to some measure of capacity or success in some way or form that we understand it (career, material, financial achievements usually).

The reality is that some people are just not meant to achieve anything in life. They aren’t achievers. They were not meant to be. And yes, you can read that to mean, some people are quite frankly destined for mediocrity. The thing is, some people are OKAY with mediocrity. They are happy with not having left footsteps in the sands of humanity. They are cool with having just existed, had fun, and move on to fertilising the daisies. It doesn’t matter to them that they don’t live on, have no legacy, don’t leave anything meaningful behind, and contributed only in the form of adding more lives to the planet (read: offspring).

There’s nothing wrong with this. But to define this as WINNING is unfair to the WINNERS if you ask me. And patently unfair to those who are LOSERS by virtue of having TRIED to be winners. If everybody is a winner, then what is the point in being a winner? Similarly, if there is no pain of being vanquished, defeated, how can there ever be drive to succeed and go to the next level?

We don’t call every person who plays a sport an Olympian. Even people who compete in the Olympics get to distinguish themselves from the gifted amateurs. More so the gold medalists.

So, before I get whacked for being a heartless troll-witch who shreds dreams for breakfast and eats hope for dinner, let me say this.

What I do believe is that every person has a GIFT.

1996 Randy Glasbergen www.glasbergen.com

That gift may not be something that makes them successful. But it is what makes them special.

And before you think, oh, that’s a good thing. Let me add this: you can be gifted with tremendous despicability.

But wait, I don’t have a problem with someone being gifted at being despicable. It takes a special talent to be despicable. OF course, people say – wait, how can being despicable be a ‘GIFT’? Well, if we stopped being judgmental about what is good and bad, then gifts are just gifts.

In Harry Potter, everyone of those kids who went to Hogwarts was ‘gifted’. Not all of them used their gifts the right way. Who is to say a gift has to be a positive feature or attribute? Charm is a gift – it can be used for good (pleasing people) or evil (seducing witless females?). but then, if that charm made someone happy for all of 5 seconds, surely there is some good in that?

So perhaps the true way to perceive BaZi is this – is a person using their gifts whatever that gift may be? Forget about whether or not their gift leads to success, creates something meaningful, or lasting. Have they found their gift, and are they using it?