02 Dec The crystal ball delusion
Here is another story from the Tao/Dao tradition. This one is by Huai Nan Tzu.
A long time ago in a poor village in China there lived an old man. The old man was the only one in the village who owned a horse. The other villagers would often say to him “how fortunate you are!” and he would always reply “who knows?” One day the old man’s horse ran away and the villagers came to him in sympathy and said “how unfortunate you are!”. The old man simply replied “who knows?”.
A few days later the old man’s horse returned to the village bringing two wild horses back with it. The villagers ran to the old man to tell him the good news. They surrounded him and said “how fortunate you are!”, the old man replied “who knows?”
The next day the old man’s son tried to tame one of the wild horses and was thrown off. The fall badly injured his leg. The villagers ran to the old man to give him the bad news. They said to him “how unfortunate you are!” and the old man replied “who knows?”
A week later war broke out and all the able-bodied young men of the village were drafted into the kingdom’s army. The old man’s son was allowed to stay with his father in the village because of his injured leg. By the time the old man’s son had grown old he had bred many fine horses. The villagers often said to him “how fortunate you are!” and he would always shrug his shoulders and say “who knows?”
This is one of my favourite stories. I can think of numerous times in my life when something “bad” happened to me and then with hindsight I have come to see it as a blessing. Most of us will acknowledge that we can’t see into the future but we ignore what that means. It is difficult for us to know whether an event is good or bad unless we can see the future consequences of that event. We are often presented with a variety of choices in our lives but when we make a choice it is often impossible to know what would have happened had we made a different choice, we will probably never know if it was the best choice.
Despite that we overreact to events the way the villagers in the story do. One moment we feel blessed and we are flying high only soon after to come crashing down when bad news comes our way. Enduring the cycle of emotional boom and bust is painful and stressful for most of us. When we fully appreciate that we can’t see into the future we can see that we are just blindly guessing and making unfounded assumptions. We often judge our real lives against some utopian “rose tinted” alternative that only exists in our imagination. When we see this crystal ball delusion for what it is we can calm down and develop enough equanimity to shrug our shoulders and say “who knows?”
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