The Emperor and The Hermit

The one who governs beside the one who left. The tradition reads the pair as a real choice about proximity to power, and it is careful not to romanticise the withdrawal: The Hermit gave something up and the pair acknowledges the cost on both sides.

Associated with somebody stepping back from a role in a family or a household, and with the vacancy that leaves.

Read for declining a position, or for stepping out of one. The pair treats that as a legitimate move rather than a failure of nerve.

Withdrawing is a decision with consequences, not an absence of one. Make it deliberately and say so.