Bai Juyi
There is a setting between all-in and out
He arranged a salary and a title for that setting
'Middle Hiding', from his collected works; the sinecure at Luoyang taken in 829
You cannot keep going like this and cannot afford to stop. Whether a liveable third position exists between them.
What actually happened?
In 829, at fifty-eight, Bai Juyi asked for a post called Adviser to the Heir Apparent, attached to the secondary capital. It carried rank and a monthly salary, required no court attendance and almost no work. He moved to Luoyang and stayed eighteen years, until he died. He wrote a poem for the arrangement, sorting people into three kinds: the great recluse hides in the marketplace, the lesser one in the hills. The hills are too bleak and the market too loud, so he took the middle kind and hid inside an office.
Both extremes are refused first
The opening rejects each side on its own terms: the hills are too desolate, the court too noisy. He does not make retreat noble or office corrupt. Only once both are admitted to be unliveable does a third option have a reason to exist.
Go flat out or hand in your notice - most people are stuck because those are the only two they can see.
Neither quite in nor quite out
His description is a run of negatives: it resembles serving and also withdrawing, is neither busy nor idle. That is not vagueness. The whole value is that it belongs fully to neither side, so neither side's price is charged in full.
A role with no promotion track and nobody calling at midnight; you cannot say if it is a step up or down.
He states what holds the setting up
The next lines are blunt about the economics: no toil of mind or body, no hunger or cold, no official business all year, and a salary every month. This is not a frame of mind. It is rank and money that other people recognise.
Before taking on less work, check whether the year still works without that income. If it does not, you will be pulled back.
He calls it a compromise, never an ideal
The poem ends by placing him between hardship and success, between plenty and want. He is not offering the best answer, he is offering one that can be occupied for years. Read as transcendence, it loses the word he actually wrote: between.
Accepting that these few years will be neither outstanding nor falling behind costs less than swinging between the two.
He did not reason his way there first
The poem was written in Luoyang, and by then he had been demoted to Jiangzhou, moved to Zhongzhou and governed both Hangzhou and Suzhou. The middle position is where he landed after all of that, not an insight he had while young.
People who have stopped competing have usually competed first, and lost, which is how they learned which slot they want.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you cannot keep going at this pace, and stopping altogether frightens you.
Ask first: am I looking for a break or for a different setting - because if it is the second, where does the money for that setting come from, and who recognises the title?
Where it goes wrong: using it as a licence to coast. His post had rank, salary and standing, and he could only reach it after a career as a senior governor. Without those, the middle position is just idleness with no income.
Lines to keep
The hills are too bleak and the marketplace too loud.
It resembles serving and it resembles withdrawing.
Neither busy nor idle, and that is the whole point.
Rank and salary hold the setting up, not a state of mind.
Same situation, other people are asking
I don't want to compete and I'm afraid of being left behind.Everyone stays late. I feel guilty leaving on time.I want to slow down and I'm afraid of losing my place.I don't want to race but I'm scared to stop · all 3 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.