img Photo by Marie Anna Lee, University of the Pacific

Here’s a short post about an interesting story that I discovered randomly last week — and it instantly became my favourite. This Taoist story was re-told by an English writer, Alan Watts, in his book, “Tao: The Watercourse Way”.

Once upon a time, there was a farmer who lived in a village. One day, his only horse ran away. Later that day, the villagers came to the farmer and said, “That was such bad luck. We are sorry to hear that your horse ran away.” But, the farmer replied, “Maybe!”

The next day, his horse returned to him, but brought with it six wild horses, and the villagers came exclaiming at his good fortune, “Wow, aren’t you lucky?” The farmer then again just said, “Maybe!”

On the following day, the farmer’s son is trying to train and tame one of the wild horses. While riding the horse, he fell off and broke his leg. The villagers again came back and offer their sympathy for the misfortune, “We are sorry to hear your son broke his leg. That’s terrible.” The farmer once again just said, “Maybe!“

The day after that, some army officers came to the village to seize young men for the army. However, the farmer’s son had been left out because he had a broken leg. Again, the villagers came back to say, “How fortunate you are! Isn’t that amazing?” Once again, the farmer just said, “Maybe!“

Lesson Learned

This world is serenely cyclic — fortune and misfortune, life and death — come and go everlastingly without a beginning or an end. It’s impossible for us to tell the true meaning of what we think is good or bad, true or false, black or white.

This story reminds me to embrace the life’s uncertainty (Heraclitus once said, “the only constant in life is change”), not get too attached to what happens in life, and to keep a positive attitude in spite of it all.