The Wisdom of "You Never Know"

There's one little story that really helped me learn to deal with loss. It's the story of a farmer whose horse had run away. All of his neighbors came around to commiserate with him and they said, "Ah, we're so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate." The farmer said, "You never know." Well, wouldn't you know it, a couple of days later the horse came back bringing 7 other wild horses with it. The neighbors arrived and said, "Oh, isn't that lucky? What a great "Turn of events, you now have 8 horses." The farmer said, "You never know." Well, the very next day his son was trying to break one of the horses and instead he broke his leg because he was thrown to the ground. The neighbor said, "Oh no, your son has a broken leg, that's too bad." And the farmer said, "You never know." Well, several days later the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army. They of course had to reject his son because he had a broken leg. "Isn't that great?" said his neighbors. "You never know," said the farmer. You see, the whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it's really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in your life is good or bad, because you never know what will be the consequence of that misfortune. Or you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune. So it's very important that we learn to have patience in the face of any kind of loss.