37 Family - The I Ching

In this hexagram, we have one of our most human images in the text: a family around a fire. This is the defining moment in mankind’s development, leaving behind the darkness of night with the help of Prometheus. This allowed us to move from primal relationships formed out of fear and lust, and into civilization. 

The hexagram shows wind emerging from fire: warmth, or wood atop a fire, the process of feeding fire.

The ideogram gives us a man and a house: a roof over a pig. This is a house with food in it, the place where we eat our meals.

Judgment: This is the very essence of mankind’s gender binary.  Whether in a prehistoric matriarchal culture or more modern patriarchal culture, the home is meant for women. Throughout history, men would go forth and hunt or make war while women held down the house.

1 Robert Frost puts it well: Good fences make good neighbors. A family protects itself within a home, both from the elements and other people. The fence then protects the land wherein the house is. Beyond material, this is the creation of boundaries and the defining of family, be it nuclear or extended.

2 The Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh gives a similar wisdom: the idea that doing dishes is unpleasant can only occur when you aren’t doing them. When we daydream and fantasize during daily chores, we betray the sacred nature of our home. Like making a meal, when we love who we are cooking for, it’s not something we want to escape from.

3 Too much severity to those close to us is very shameful.  It produces  distance between loved ones and creates resentment and rebellion. This does not mean never punishing or scolding, but utilizing it properly. The family will not laugh at a good and strong father, but a tyrant begs for mockery. 

4 A fortunate family is a great blessing. When we live well due the efforts of our ancestors, it is good to ensure our children are given the same gifts, and inculcate in them the same ethic. A good name is not made quickly.

5 When we leave the home and go forth into the world, we are  often assailed by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. If you are blessed with a good family, you know you can return home to relax and unwind. A good home is a peaceful home. Many know too well that trouble within the home is usually much worse than trouble outside it.

6 To procreate, one needs a great deal of faith. If we have no faith in our own family it can be difficult to create a larger one. If we have no faith in our partner, or ourselves, it seems futile. A powerful faith is necessary to continue one’s bloodline.

This hexagram can be a sensitive one, as it offers an ideal many people struggle to attain. For many, this ideal is not only a practical impossibility but an oppressive structure altogether. If Freud showed us anything, it is that our ideas about the concept of family are profoundly, if not solely, influenced by our own family life. A person from a good family loves family, a person from a bad family often despises not only their own, but the very idea. Let us then consider how to make, keep, and continue good families.