Having the Agility to Bounce Back

It was a tough weekend. Ontop of a few personal things that I'm carrying and catching COVID, the weekend that we had expected to be a relaxing weekend quickly turned into being stranded in the our airbnb after 8 feet of snow poured in when it was originally forecasted to have 2 inches of snow, and our car failing on the drive out, we tried to get passerby’s to stop and help push our car to no avail and was stuck pushing the car in traffic for over 8+ hours….

and in the mix of all the emotional roller-coaster and feeling a strong sense of pity ontop myself (woe is I, why is this happening to me??) a wise friend on the trip shared an old Chinese parable with me about a farmer and his son to give some perspective on how to live above the thrash of happiness and sadness.

The farmer and the son lived on a farm and had a beloved horse who helped the family earn a living.

One day, the horse ran away and their neighbors exclaimed, “Your horse ran away, what terrible luck!”

The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

A few days later, the horse returned home, leading a few wild horses back to the farm as well.

When this happened, the neighbors shouted out, “Your horse has returned, and brought several horses home with him. What great luck!”

The farmer cautiously replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

A few weeks passed and whilst working on the field, the farmer’s son was trying to break one of the new wild horses and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg.

The neighbors all chimed in, “Your son broke his leg, what terrible luck!”

The farmer, patient as always, replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

A few months passed and the county is now in war, and soldiers from the national army came to recruit young boys.

All the young men of the neighborhood were recruited but they did not take the farmer’s son, because he had a broken leg.

The neighbors shouted, “Your boy is spared, what tremendous luck!”

To which the farmer replied in ever steady calmness, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”

This is a funny little story and parables sometimes can be a little juvenile in trying to hammer a point home, however I found hearing this tale when I feel like I am at my lows to be very cathartic - as in there is no "snapshot" in time of win or loose and we are constantly in the ebb and flow of both the great and ugly parts of life.

It almost is a philosophy to live life above the fray, to move under the currents as opposed to being thrashed in the waves at the surface level, and it can offer some insight into how we can learn to accept good and bad situations in our lives without judgement.