Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Cut From the Tennis Team
When I was a freshman in high school, I tried out for the tennis team. I loved tennis, played regularly, and was a pretty decent player for my age. Unfortunately, the coach was a man who would probably have been more at home coaching the cross country team than the tennis team. Tryouts mostly consisted of distance running, which was not my strong suit. It’s not that I was out of shape – I had just hiked the Pacific Crest Trail from the Columbia River to Mt. Hood and climbed Mt. Hood a week before tryouts began. We did play some tennis, and I did fine, but I wasn’t much of a runner.
After two weeks of tryouts, they posted the list of players who had made the team. My name was not on it. I was simultaneously sad, embarrassed, and angry. Some of the kids I had beaten in practice matches were on the list. It was stupid. It was unfair. And it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
That fall, instead of going to tennis practices and matches after school, I hung out with my friend Eric. One day, he suggested going over to Nate’s house to play basketball. I didn’t know Nate very well, but I agreed. It was fun, and his little sister brought us out lemonade and homemade cookies while we were playing. The next day, we went back to play touch football in the cul-de-sac, and after our game, Nate’s mom invited us in for waffles. I was hooked.
I spent nearly every afternoon that school year playing at Nate’s house. Oh, and another kid was doing the same because he was close friends with Nate, a gregarious boy named Dominik. Over the next year, Nate and Dom became my best friends. We did everything together through high school and beyond. I became integrated into both of their families, effectively acquiring two bonus families, and my parents became good friends with their parents.
The point of this story is that sometimes events that seem obviously bad can turn out to be for the best. If I hadn’t got cut from the tennis team freshman year, I might have never become friends with Nate and Dom. I would have missed out on two of the most important relationships in my life. Oh, and the next year, there was a new tennis coach, and I made the team easily.
Now, you might be wondering, “Okay, that’s all well and good, but why is an image of a horse the title picture of this post?”
Great question. There’s a story, involving a horse, that relates to the story I’ve just told. The following is a classic fable, possibly of Buddhist origin, about the same idea. You can find various versions of it all over the internet.
The Parable of the Farmer
One day in late summer, a farmer was working in his field with his old, sick horse. The farmer felt compassion for the horse and wanted to let it retire. So he set the horse loose to go into the mountains and live out the rest of its life.
Soon after, neighbors from the nearby village visited, offering their condolences. They said, “What a shame. Now your only horse is gone. How unfortunate you are!”
“Maybe so, maybe not,” the farmer replied. “We shall see.”
Two days later, the old horse came back rejuvenated from wandering in the mountains and eating the wild grasses. And returning with him were twelve healthy, wild horses!
Word got out in the village of the farmer’s good fortune, and it wasn’t long before people stopped by to congratulate him on his good luck. “How fortunate you are!” they exclaimed.
Again, the farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We shall see.”
The next morning, the farmer’s only son attempted to train one of the wild horses, but he was thrown to the ground and broke his leg. The villagers arrived to bemoan the farmer’s latest misfortune. “Your son won’t be able to help you run the farm with a broken leg. You’ll have to do all the work yourself. Oh, what a tragedy you’ve had!” they said.
Calmly going about his usual business, the farmer answered, “Maybe so, maybe not. We shall see.”
Several days later, a war broke out. The emperor’s men came to the village demanding that young men come with them to fight. Because of his broken leg, the farmer’s son was deemed unfit to serve. “What very good fortune you have!” the villagers exclaimed as their own sons were marched away to war.
“Maybe so, maybe not. We shall see,” said the farmer as he headed off to work.
As time went on, his son’s broken leg healed, but he was left with a limp. Again the neighbors came to pay their condolences. “Oh what bad luck you have; too bad for you!”
But the farmer replied simply, “Maybe so, maybe not. We shall see.”
As it turned out, the other village boys died in the war, and the farmer and his son were the only able-bodied men capable of working the village lands. The farmer became very wealthy and was very generous to the villagers. They said, “Oh how fortunate we are!”
And the farmer sagely whispered, “Maybe so, maybe not. We shall see.”
Unwarranted Certainty
The point here is that the certainty we feel about seemingly good and bad things is often unjustified. We cannot predict the future. And since we don’t know what’s going to happen, we don’t know whether or not things will prove to be for the best, for the worst, or somewhere in between.
It is frequently the case that supposedly good things turn out to have unforeseen downsides. Lottery winners, for example, often find themselves burdened with endless requests for money, strained relationships, and overall less happiness than they had before winning.1 Good fortune sometimes isn’t.
Remembering this lesson can help you stay grounded when something supposedly good happens. It can also reduce your cravings for supposedly good things that have not yet happened.
Likewise, it is often the case that supposedly bad things turn out to have unforeseen upsides. Me getting cut from the tennis team is a great example of this. A more recent example is breaking my foot. While initially devastating, it led me to grow up, find a career I love, get sober, master behavioral change, and learn how to cultivate deep happiness. I’m much better off now because this “bad” thing happened. Sometimes big problems give big gifts.
Remembering this lesson can help you restore your equanimity more quickly when something supposedly bad happens. It can also reduce your psychological resistance to supposedly bad things, helping you more readily accept them when they occur.
This also applies to the mistakes we make. It’s possible that a mistake you’ve made is truly for the worst, but it’s also possible it’s for the best. Maybe there’s a critical lesson to be learned from this error, and maybe now is actually the least painful time to learn it. Or maybe this mistake is a necessary step along your path of growth.
Unknown Alternative Paths
We get to live but one of many possible lives. At each fork in the road, at each decision, at each chance happening, paths diverge. Along one path is the life we actually live and the outcomes we actually experience. Along the other paths are the lives we might have lived and the outcomes we might have experienced. Because we can never know what lies down the paths we do not take, we can never truly know whether something is for the best or for the worst.
A close friend of mine has a rare genetic disorder that caused him to lose his eyesight over the past two years. His apparent misfortune seems like a clear-cut case of something that is definitely bad. How can anyone view losing their eyesight through rose-colored glasses? What possible good could come of it?
Well, the truth is, we don’t know. It is possible that, because his vision-loss has kept him from driving, it has also saved him from dying in a car accident. That’s not very likely, but it is possible. It is also possible that, prevented from engaging in his other hobbies, he will pick up the violin and start playing again after more than a decade of not playing. If he does that, perhaps he will become a musician whose craft brings great joy to both him and those who listen to him play.
Creating Our Own Futures
Much in life is left up to chance, but we are not simply leaves blowing in the wind. We are active agents in life, capable of proactively working to make the best of the cards we’re dealt.
So another lesson from the parable of the farmer is that, instead of focusing our energy on judging whether some event is good or bad, we should spend our energy making our future as good as we possibly can. The farmer, after all, just kept on working as all this drama unfolded. As Tal Ben-Shahar said:
“Things do not always happen for the best, but we can always make the best of the things that happen.”2
1 Chan, Melissa. “Here’s How Winning the Lottery Makes You Miserable.” Time. January 12, 2016.
2 Ben-Shahar, Tal. Psychology 1504: Positive Psychology. Harvard Open Course, 2009.