Sometimes great change, disaster or windfall, appears to happen suddenly.
This is an illusion of perception.
The moment where change seems to be happening with great speed is in fact
long after the
seeds of that change were planted.
The sage can look back and see many conditions, little developments, without which that great change could never have taken place.
All change actually starts with a series of smaller incipient events; often these will not even resemble or seem to have anything to do with the great change they can lead to.
Thus, the skilled practitioner can learn how to observe these earlier conditions, and make great changes eventually happen (or prevent them) with very little effort.
This is the power that a profound study of
the I Ching grants: to be able to see the process of time, and how to change things before they happen.