The road that had no end

Ruan Ji was one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. He was a poet, a heavy drinker, and a man who had very little patience for the official world he was born into.

He used to drive a carriage out of the city with no destination. He'd ride until the road ran out and there was nowhere to go. Then he'd sit there and weep, and turn the carriage around and go home.

This gets quoted as a picture of romantic despair. I think it's a very practical thing he discovered, and it has a technical name now: it's what happens when a person who is extremely capable meets a system that will not let them use it. Ruan Ji lived in a period where the wrong sentence could cost you your life, and the men around him were being executed for exactly that.

So he rode to the end of the road, cried, and went home. He did this for years. He also died at fifty-three, of illness, having written poetry that's still read.

The thing worth taking is that he named it. The weeping at the end of a road isn't weakness. It's the only honest response to a limit that won't move.

If you're in a situation whose shape you can't fix, and you've been calling your reaction to it a personal failing, that's the thing to correct.

MOJOWAY's job with clients in that position isn't to find a technique. It's to record the limit accurately and separate it from the story where the limit is their fault.