The Chinese Farmer
My good friend, mentor, and former EvoStream Project Manager, Chas Baker had a habit of sharing this video with me when we'd encounter misfortune. At first, this philosophy was counterintuitive to my business philosophy, my work ethic, and my instincts which always drove me to use force. To resist or persist in the face of adversity.
In contrast, the Taoist philosophy teaches us to simply observe our encounters with misfortune. Students are taught to withhold judgment, detach emotionally from the perceived negative results and instead be patient, open-minded, and curious about the outcome as though this event were a small piece to a very complex and incomplete puzzle.
With this in mind, and of course highly skeptical, I developed a retrospective habit of connecting the dots across my endeavors in business over many years. In backtracking, what I found was that nearly all misfortune would provide an opportunity for required transformation and eventually good fortune. Sometimes it would come immediately and other times it would take years to understand.
After years of observation, I find myself completely convinced of my blessings and their strange and often polarizing origins. Because of this, I am actively practicing "Wu Wei" or the act of not forcing things. Bruce Lee famously said, "Be like water" meaning do not use force against nature and your environment. Instead, adjust.
I believe this Chinese Fable as narrated by Alan Watts captures this important lesson so well.
"Once upon a time, there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.” The farmer said, “Maybe.”
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The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!” The farmer again said, “Maybe.”
The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “Maybe.” The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “Isn’t that great!” Again, he said, “Maybe.”
The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad — because you never know what will be the consequence of the misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune."
—?Alan Watts