Fire on the mountain: it does not stay, it moves along the ridge. Lǚ is the wanderer — life in passage, the stranger's condition, belonging suspended.
Its ethics are the traveler's: modesty, caution, reserve; obliging manners toward hosts; attachments kept light because the fire moves on. Success comes through smallness here — the wanderer who remembers he is a wanderer finds inns, helpers, and safe passage; the one who forgets burns down his own nest.
問Lǚ can mark love in transit — long distance, new circumstances, or a season when one heart is between homes. Its counsel is the traveler's grace: hold the bond warmly but lightly, be a courteous guest in each other's worlds rather than presuming ownership. Security, the fourth line admits, is not yet belonging — name that honestly, and the passage itself can be tender.
Professionally, Lǚ is the outsider's position: the consultant, the newcomer, the expatriate posting. Its handbook: keep engagements modest and impeccable, win the loyalty of a few genuine helpers, aim single well-placed arrows rather than campaigns. Above all avoid the wanderer's two ruins — busying yourself with trivia, and arrogance in a land where you have no roots.
Inwardly, Lǚ is the truth beneath the metaphor: everyone is in passage, all residence temporary. Held rightly, this yields not anxiety but lightness — clear-minded, cautious, protracting no quarrels, traveling with little. The wanderer who laughs carelessly early weeps at the boundary; the one who travels awake finds the whole road hospitable.
A line speaks only when it is a changing line in your own casting.