Is it good or is it bad?
An old Chinese farmer lost his best stallion one day and his neighbor came around to express his regrets, “that’s too bad you lost your horse.”
The farmer just said, “Who knows what is good and what is bad.”
The next day the stallion returned bringing with him 3 wild mares. The neighbor rushed back to celebrate with the farmer, “that’s so wonderful that you gained 3 new mares.”
The farmer simply said, “Who knows what is good and what is bad.”
The following day, the farmer’s son fell from one of the wild mares while trying to break her in and broke his arm and injured his leg.
The neighbor came by to give his condolences, “that’s too bad your son fell and hurt himself,”
The old farmer just said, “Who knows what is good and what is bad.”
The next day the army came to the farm to enlist the farmer’s son for the war, but found him invalid and left him with his father.
The neighbor thought to himself, “Who knows what is good and what is bad.” –
Taoist parable
We use good-or-bad to categorize nearly everything in our lives — events, people, food, decisions and it’s a trap that causes us emotional pain.
The lesson of the story is that it’s just a matter of time until good things are born out of the seemingly bad, and vice versa.
What is bad leads to good leads to bad leads to good. The farmer is wise enough to know it all comes out in the wash.
How can we use this story to help us handle life’s challenging situations?
When you experience a “bad” event, try to imagine what possible good could come out of it, even if it’s many years from now or even if it just makes you more empathetic or prepared next time.
Not convinced? Look back on something bad from your past and connect the dots between that event and real happiness or something good that came later as a direct result of that breakup, layoff, sickness etc.
We often fail to see what long-term effect can be born out of what is happening now.
Once you can get into the habit of trying to find the good inside of the bad, you will start to temper your reactions to the peaks and valleys in your life.
With so much unpredictability and chaos in our uncertain world, I’ve learned that sometimes it doesn’t really help the situation to label it as “good” or “bad”. But rather, we need to say “it is what it is.” All the overanalysis, overthinking and overlabeling doesn’t really accomplish anything worthwhile.
In fact, often times it makes us feel worse. We get stressed out, anxious and overwhelmed when things are different (BAD) from the way we believe they ought to be (GOOD).
Then we feel hurt, disappointed, upset, resentful, etc.
In order to better deal with life, we need to accept that life is supposed to be unpredictable, good, bad, ugly, and great all rolled up together.
