The Tale of The Taoist Farmer

STORY OF THE TAOIST FARMER

“There was once a farmer in ancient China who owned a horse. “You are so lucky!” his neighbors told him, “to have a horse to pull the cart for you.” “Maybe,” the farmer replied.

One day he didn’t latch the gate properly and the horse ran away. “Oh no! That is terrible news!” his neighbors cried. “Such bad luck!” “Maybe,” the farmer replied.

A few days later the horse returned, bringing with it six wild horses. “How fantastic! You are so lucky,” his neighbors told him. “Maybe,” the farmer replied.

The following week the farmer’s son was breaking-in one of the wild horses when it threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. “Oh no!” the neighbors cried. “Such bad luck, all over again!” “Maybe,” the farmer replied.

The next day soldiers came and took away all the young men to fight in the army. The farmer’s son was left behind. “You are so lucky!” his neighbors cried. “Maybe,” the farmer replied.

When we interpret a situation as an ‘opportunity’ or a ‘disaster’ it shapes the way that we respond.

But the Taoist Farmer shows that we can never truly know how a situation is going to turn out. There are no intrinsic ‘opportunities’ or ‘threats’ — there is only what happens and how we choose to respond.

In which case, doesn’t it make sense to look for the opportunities in every situation?

Are you facing a crisis at the moment? How might you turn it into an opportunity?

SO much has happened in the past year.

Some good, some just so-so, and a lot of it bad. Life had been a veritable roller coaster of disappointments.

“So much fuckery!” I am fond of saying. But,(and I’m asking you to bear with me here) what if there’s magic in the mess?

Inspirational speaker Rob Bell cautions us against judging a situation before we let it “play out”.
“Disappointment is taking score too soon,” he warns.

THAT has become my North Star and THAT is what has been playing out around me over and over and over again recently, so much so that I just had to write about it!

Imagine if you will, a non-believer in all of this hooey. We will call him, Husband.

A lovely curmudgeon of a man who, when confronted, refers to himself as a “realist”. Now imagine that as a cosmic joke perpetrated by the universe’s wicked sense of irony, this man lives with yours truly!

Now, take another leap and imagine that some of my woo, through acts of osmosis over twenty years together, has rubbed off on him.

Case in point: In the middle of the 2020 lockdown, he got kicked out of his “man cave” a place that smells of gasoline and beer, where he and his friends have hung out, tinkering with their various internal combustion gizmos while scratching their balls and watching car porn for over seven years.

“It’s the end of the world!” he howled into the wind.
“Maybe,” I responded from a safe distance away.

“I guess I could call my friend and see if he wants to split a place,” he posed one day after the crying had ceased.
“Sounds good,” I said, exercising a surprising economy with words.

“OMG! We found the PERFECT place but the landlord is a dick!” Husband complained one morning. “He wants to see every bank statement, five years of tax returns, social security, baptismal, confirmation, divorce and marriage certificates, AND a fifty-bajillion dollar deposit!”

“Feels to me like there might be a better place. I’d keep looking.”

“Noooooooooooo!!!!”

But there was. A better place.
The perfect place. Closer, cheaper, with a terrific landlord who basically agreed to the deal the day he met them—with a handshake.

And this has led to the man cave of all man caves and a side business that puts a sustained smile on that curmudgeon’s face the likes of which I’ve rarely (if ever) seen.

“What we need is an orange, rolling metal ladder!” Husband announced one day after breaking and building shit at the new lair.

And that is why god in her infinite wisdom invented the internet.

A couple of days later he received an email alerting him of the delivery time. You must be there tomorrow at 9am to unlock the gate to the parking lot and take delivery, it read.
“Yippee!” Husband exclaimed because this new 2.0 version of the curmudgeon is given to sudden outbursts of joy (but that’s a story for another day). He was about to receive the ladder of his dreams—only it wasn’t orange. “No worries, that’s just paint,” he assured me when I asked. This new guy was starting to freak me out 

Later the next day he returned home deflated, pissed, and ready to rumble—in other words, his old self.

As he tells it, he arrived for the delivery fifteen minutes early only to find the giant metal ladder crumpled into an origami swan inside the locked gate. Not only that, their brand new fence had been damaged in the process. Later, according to the footage from their security cameras, he watched the two delivery guys arrive really early, back their truck up to the fence, and after several failed attempts (and lots of fence bashing) they chucked the ladder in its box (which exploded) up over their heads and into the parking lot.

“This really sucks!” Husband hollered as he navigated the Amazon third-party refund labyrinth.
“Maybe,” I texted from the bedroom.

It turns out that damning security footage is just the evidence you need to get a full refund AND money for gate repair.
And in the meantime, he found an even more perfect ladder (if you can imagine that).

Taller, wheelier, cheaper…and orange.

“Wow! You’re so lucky!” I exclaimed.
“Maybe,” he replied with a wink.

If Husband can change his tune—we all can. Who’s still taking score? Not me!

Carry on,
xoxJ