Reading Time: 5 min
Contents
Chinese parable
A prized stallion of a Chinese farmer runs away. The neighbours sympathize, “That is unfortunate”. But the farmer had just this reply, “Good news, bad news, who can say?”
The next day the horse returns and brings half a dozen horses to the farm. The neighbours comment, “That is such good news!” But the farmer responds the same, “Good news, bad news, who can say?”
The next day, the farmer’s son is riding one of these wild horses, falls off and breaks the leg. The neighbours, being neighbourly, say “We are so sorry to hear the bad news.” The farmer sticks to his words, “Good news, bad news, who can say?”
The next week, the emperor’s soldiers show up to enlist all the healthy and fit young men for war, but the farmer’s son is spared. Good news, eh? The farmer’s response has not changed. “Good news, bad news, who can say?”
Good news, bad news
The first time I read this Chinese Parable, I was working as a physician, the second time I heard it on a TED talk a few years before I started studying in IIM Bangalore, and finally a professor at IIM narrated this during one of the last lectures.
The lesson is simple. No one knows the consequence of a misfortune. No one knows the consequence of good fortune. Isolated occurrences can never be just good or bad. There is a complexity to our lives that every interconnection leads to a future that we may not be able to fathom with our limited foresight. So, we truly cannot judge whether something is good or bad, fortunate or unfortunate. So, losing ourselves in despair due to inconveniences of which the bigger picture is hidden might end up as a waste of time.
This story popped up in my head as I listened about stories about friends losing jobs, having their offers rescinded, or getting rejected from multiple jobs. There are many similar stories in their personal lives as well.
Questioning adversity
This makes me wonder, what then? I do believe that life is more comfortable when one stops taking things as good or bad and just how they are. Someone asks me a question what is the best thing that ever happened in your life? What is the worst thing? I have no answer. I find it difficult to break down life into such parts. Yes, definitive good things happen; Yes, definitive bad things happen as well. It does not mean that one has to accept either blindly, absolutely not.
As human beings, we will always strive against what we perceive as adversity. The above parable just tells us that even if something seems dark and bleak, it need not be that. It might be an opportunity in disguise, which would be apparent only when we look back upon our life in the future.
A healthy attitude
Right now, the only thing one can do is see the circumstances, figure out all the possible solutions, be willing to change those solutions as and when required and do the best thing that can be done. Rather than fear of what might happen, replace it with excitement with a thought that it will be fascinating to see what happens.
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
We can be subservient to our state of affairs and surrender to our hedonistic or disconsolate impulses, or we can ask ourselves the question – Good news, bad news, who can say?
This image was clicked in Kerala . Check out more pictures in my Portfolio or follow me on Instagram for more travel photographs.
Very well written. Everything that happens can be both boon or curse; it all depends on how we take it.