Maybe, Maybe not
A Taoist tale, Krishna, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Marcus Aurelius all say the same thing
There is a 2nd century B.C. Chinese story that I enjoy. I first came across a modified version of it and so that’s what I will share here.1 It goes:
Once upon a time, there was a Chinese farmer who lost a horse. It ran away.
All his neighbors came around in the evening and said, “That’s too bad.”The farmer said, “Maybe.”
The next day, the horse came back and brought seven wild horses with it, and all the neighbors came around and said, “Oh, that’s great, isn’t it?”
And he said, “Maybe.”
The next day, his son was attempting to tame one of these horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. All the neighbors came round in the evening and said, “Oh, that’s too bad.”
And the farmer said, “Maybe.”
The next day, the conscription officers came around looking for people for the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. And all the neighbors came around in the evening and said, “Isn’t that wonderful!”
Again, he said, “Maybe.”
What appears to be good, may not always be. And what appears to be bad, may not always be. We are limited in our insight into the future. In the Mahabaratha, Krishna relays a similar message to Arjuna2.
Given this limitation, there is probably only one sustainable option for how to orient ourselves to the world. We can aim to be in the present and control what we can control. This idea of only controlling what we can control and accepting the rest sounds like Marcus Aurelius’ writings in Meditations. The maximalist interpreter of Aurelius, however, runs the risk of attempting to control too much.3 Trying to control too much spits in the face of the inherent uncertainty and nonlinearity of life that these stories try to convey. No matter who you are, most things we cannot control. And, there is nothing wrong or right with that.
The wins and losses and ups and downs will take place, but they need not define how you or I feel. We can choose what to focus on. The outcome is transient, fleeting, and ephemeral. The process is constant and ever-present. Instead of trying to hold onto or chase a thing that comes and goes, it is better to focus on the process. The joy lies in the journey, the daily process. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance echoes a similar theme:
“To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here’s where things grow”.
- Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Searching for the next hit of dopamine is exhilarating but unsustainable. Our lives are increasingly built around this which makes it very hard to not live under this framework. The farmer’s story is a stark contrast to the rat race mindset embedded into our modern lives. Often, people today run and chase things, titles, money, and status with dogged determination. This is their driving force. But, chasing without a defined goal runs the risk chasing endlessly.4 Perhaps, to avoid chasing, you should proactively define the simple things you want from life and choose to not let your desires keep expanding. Otherwise, you may wander through life like the businessman who urges a fisherman to scale his enterprise endlessly, only to end up exactly where he began.5
To be honest, I can’t remember where I first read / saw this
What feels good or bad is transient and not absolute. What appears to be good, bad, important or not may not truly be. Krishna points out that as humans we have a limited view of the situation.
One example of this would be to look at sports. Every athlete from Federer to McIlroy to Curry talks about being in the moment and just playing the game. Being in the moment is not scheming or manipulating to achieve an outcome or consciously controlling the way the racket hits your hand. It it just letting go and playing. Easy to say but hard to do. Playing to play. As Djokovic says, “I play tennis because I love to hit the ball”
It’s like being the first to bat in cricket. If you go out there in a fifty over game and set a ridiculously high target or even worse, try to score as high as you can with no target in mind, then your batsmen will swing wildly and get out at some paltry total. This is not how cricket is played though. Every team that bats first sets a target based on their individual wants, expectations, and match conditions. Then, they plot a course, and go out and try to get there.