A Difficult Birth -- Confronting Danger With Action

Difficulty at the Beginning 3 suggests the image of a thunder storm. The air is filled with thunder and swirling rain.  Heaven and Earth first combine in this hexagram. What is born from their union is visible as a blade of grass just emerging from the earth is visible. That grass has not yet left its first home, the Earth.  It is a difficult situation to be confronted by danger and to be ready for action but not yet capable of confronting and defeating the danger. Thus the hexagram recommends preparing oneself and finding helpers to overcome the danger. These preparations are all that should be accomplished now. 

"...The twenty-first century, which also arrived heralding peace and justice, is following in its predecessors footsteps. In my childhood, I was convinced that everything that went astray on earth ended up on the moon. But the astronauts found no sign of dangerous dreams or broken promises or hopes betrayed.

"If not on the moon, where might they be? Perhaps they were never misplaced. Perhaps they are in hiding here on earth. Waiting." -- Eduardo Galeano, Mirrors, Stories of Almost Everyone