Waiting begins at its easiest, and the counsel attached to its opening line is correspondingly simple: hold to ordinary constancy, since no immediate test has yet arrived. The undivided stroke sits at the base of the lower trigram Qian in an odd position, which classical commentary treats as correct placement, firm strength resting on firm ground. When this line changes, the bottom trigram stops being Qian, unbroken strength, and becomes Xun, the trigram of gentle and continuous penetration, while the upper trigram Kan remains unchanged.
The hexagram that results is Hexagram 48, the Well, whose image is water drawn up through the earth by a fixed and unmoving structure that never runs dry. The pairing is apt: a reading that begins in patient, unhurried waiting, once its first and least tested resolve gives way, arrives at an image of steady, renewable supply rather than at any dramatic reversal. Where Waiting counsels holding back before a crossing not yet due, the Well describes what sustains a community or a person through long periods without demanding that anything be forced. The movement from line one is therefore a movement from strength held in reserve to strength quietly, permanently available, a fitting first step in a hexagram built entirely around the discipline of not acting before the time is right.