A boy in a village gets a horse for his birthday. All the people in the village said, “How wonderful! The boy got a horse.”
But the zen master said, “We’ll see.”
Then several years later the boy falls off his horse and breaks his leg. The people in the village said, “How terrible.”
But the zen master said, “We’ll see.”
Then a war breaks out and all the young men are called up to fight, but the boy can’t go because his leg is all messed up. And the people said, “How wonderful.”
But the zen master said, “We’ll see.”1
There are several angles on this story, and I plan to blog them angle by angle. But first let’s think about the chain of cause and effect. In life, one thing leads to another, and it gets a bit messy. Good follows good. Good follows bad. Bad follows good. Bad follows bad. In the boy’s situation a bad thing (breaking a leg) followed a good thing (getting a horse). Then a good thing (avoiding a deadly war) followed a bad thing (breaking a leg). The zen master withheld judgment because he didn’t know what might happen next, and how the links in the chain of cause-and-effect eventually play out. Good things lead to bad things lead to good things, the story shows.
So let’s start this on a positive note. When something bad happens, I keep my hope that something good might come out of it. The business failed, but that might lead to a better business. The relationship went sideways, but that may be just the thing to make room for someone better. Bad doesn’t have to lead to worse. Bad things can lead to good things. The bad things that happen to us often happen for us.
Just the other day, my daughter Liz dropped her iPhone, shattering the glass face. She was distraught. Then we talked it through. I said, “Why don’t you check with your friends and see if any would sell their used iPhone to you? People upgrade phones so fast you might get a good one super cheap.”
“That sounds good,” she said. “I’ll try that.”
Less than a week later a friend sold her a nearly brand new iPhone 5S for $25. Dropping and breaking her old iPhone 4 led to the best upgrade a teenage girl could imagine.
It was a perfect segway to tell Liz the zen master story.
1I originally heard this story in the film, “Charlie Wilson’s War,” as told by the CIA officer played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and there are all sorts of variations online.