Welcome. This lesson begins the module “Horses, Butterflies, and the Strength of Water,” where Daoist ideas become especially useful in ordinary, slightly chaotic life: the plan that fails, the opportunity that arrives at the wrong time, the message that looks disastrous until it does not.
Our first tool is deceptively small: the farmer’s answer, “Maybe.” By the end, you should be able to use the lost-horse story from the Huainanzi to pause before declaring an event a victory or catastrophe—not by pretending that nothing hurts or matters, but by separating what has happened from the much larger story we immediately invent about it.
A horse escapes; the verdicts arrive
The story comes from the Huainanzi, a major Han-dynasty text compiled in the second century BCE. It is not identical to the Dao De Jing or the Zhuangzi, but it carries forward a strongly Daoist sensitivity to change, limits of knowledge, and the tendency of fixed judgments to mislead us.
Here is the sequence:
- A border-dweller’s horse runs away into foreign territory. The neighbors call it misfortune.
- Months later, the horse returns, bringing another fine horse. The neighbors call it good fortune.
- The man’s son rides the new horse, falls, and breaks his leg. The neighbors call it misfortune.
- A war reaches the border. Able-bodied men are conscripted, and most die. Because of the injury, the son is not taken.
At each turn, the neighbors confidently update their label: bad, good, bad, good. The father refuses to finalize the label.
The familiar modern retelling makes the father’s response simply “Maybe.” The older wording is closer to: Why rush to call this fortune or calamity? The difference is stylistic, not philosophical. “Maybe” is a compact refusal to confuse an immediate reaction with complete knowledge.
Watch this brief narration first. It gives the story its proper rhythm: each supposedly final conclusion is undone by the next event.
It is Impossible to Tell If Anything is Good or Bad - Alan Watts
Watch “It is Impossible to Tell If Anything is Good or Bad” from After Skool. It narrates the whole parable, then states the reason its lesson is not merely “look on the bright side.”
Watch the story, following the neighbors’ alternating verdicts and the farmer’s repeated “perhaps.” Then watch the explanation, which frames the problem as one of unknown consequences within a highly interconnected situation.
What the story does—and does not—say
A shallow version of the parable says: “Every bad event is secretly good.” That is not what happens in the story.
A broken leg is painful. War and mass death are horrifying. Losing a valuable horse may create real hardship. Daoist non-judgment does not require a person to deny pain, neglect risk, or respond to someone’s misfortune with the profoundly unhelpful phrase, “Well, perhaps it is for the best.”
The story makes a narrower and more demanding claim:
An event’s immediate appearance does not settle its total meaning or all of its consequences.
The farmer can recognize facts without manufacturing a cosmic verdict.
| What has happened | Premature verdict | A “maybe” response |
|---|---|---|
| “My proposal was rejected.” | “This proves I have failed.” | “This is a setback. I do not yet know what it will lead to.” |
| “The project was approved.” | “Everything is now secure.” | “This is welcome news. It may also bring new obligations and risks.” |
| “I made an embarrassing mistake.” | “I am incompetent.” | “I made a mistake. I can repair it and see what it teaches me.” |
| “An unexpected free evening appeared.” | “Great, I should fill every minute.” | “This is an opening. I can decide later what it is for.” |
The important distinction is between local evaluation and global judgment.
A local evaluation is often necessary:
- A production incident needs mitigation.
- An injury needs care.
- A missed deadline needs an honest update.
- A useful opportunity may deserve a prompt response.
But a global judgment pretends to know much more:
- “This ruins everything.”
- “This guarantees success.”
- “This proves the universe is against me.”
- “This will definitely work out.”
The farmer does not sit motionless while life happens. The story gives no indication that he abandons his household or ignores danger. His discipline is about the mental surplus we pile onto events: the urge to convert a moment into a permanent prediction about fate, self-worth, or the future.
The original ending: change has no convenient stopping point
Read the compact translation below. It is worth noticing that the story is not simply a chain of ironic reversals. Its final line makes the principle explicit: fortune and misfortune continually convert into one another, and their deeper pattern exceeds our ability to measure it.
Huainanzi – Old Man on the Border Loses His Horse – Chinese Literature Podcast
Read the Chinese Literature Podcast’s translation of the parable. This version preserves the border setting, the threat of war, and the concluding statement about ongoing change.
Under “Lee’s Translation,” read the full parable, from its opening reflection through the concluding lines. After the linked sentence, finish the final sentence beginning “Change continues without end.” Focus on the father’s repeated refusal to make a final assessment, and on why the military context changes the practical consequences of the son’s injury.
The phrase “fortune becomes misfortune; misfortune becomes fortune” can sound mystical if taken as a law that guarantees reversals. It is more useful to read it as a warning about incomplete causal visibility.
You see one event now. You do not see:
- the later decisions it will provoke;
- the people it will bring into or remove from your life;
- the constraints it will reveal;
- the alternative outcomes that did not occur;
- the horizon over which the event should be evaluated.
In technical work, this is a familiar problem in a different register. An early metric, incident, or experiment result may be highly informative, but it is not automatically a complete evaluation of the system’s long-term outcome. The farmer’s point is not statistical uncertainty in a narrow sense; it is humility about the scope of one’s model. We often assign the label good or bad while quietly assuming we know the relevant objective, time horizon, and downstream effects. Usually, we do not.
That humility is not paralysis. It clears space for a better next action.
“Maybe” as a practical interruption
When an event is emotionally charged, the mind is fast. It produces a verdict before it has even finished registering the facts. You do not need to erase that reaction. Just avoid appointing it chief historian of reality.
Try this short four-part pause the next time something feels clearly fortunate or unfortunate.
1. State the observable event
Use language a camera could roughly record.
- “The meeting was cancelled.”
- “I received a rejection.”
- “The client extended the deadline.”
- “My code caused a regression.”
This protects you from smuggling interpretation into the description. “They do not respect me” is not a camera-level fact; it is a hypothesis, perhaps a plausible one, but still a hypothesis.
2. Name the immediate consequence honestly
Non-judgment is not emotional anesthesia.
- “I am disappointed.”
- “This creates extra work.”
- “This relieves pressure.”
- “This is financially worrying.”
The farmer’s stance is compatible with relief, grief, frustration, and urgency. What it declines is a conclusion that the present feeling has settled the entire future.
3. Add the Daoist interval: “Maybe”
You might say inwardly:
“This may be good; this may be bad. I do not yet know enough to close the case.”
This sentence has a useful double effect. It softens overconfidence after apparent success and prevents despair after apparent failure. It is not a substitute for analysis; it makes analysis more possible by reducing the emotional compulsion to declare the result final.
4. Choose the next proportionate action
Ask: Given what I know now, what is the smallest sensible response?
For example, suppose a carefully prepared feature demonstration goes badly.
- The fact: the demo failed because an integration was unstable.
- The immediate consequence: you lost credibility in the moment and need to repair the technical issue.
- The “maybe”: the failure may expose a weakness that would otherwise have appeared later, under worse conditions. Or it may simply be a frustrating failure. Either way, its final significance is open.
- The action: stabilize the integration, communicate the issue plainly, and change the demonstration process.
Notice the quality of this response. It is neither “Everything happens for a reason” nor “This is a disaster.” It is attentive, realistic, and uninflated.
A small practice for the coming day
For one day, do not try to become permanently serene. That is an excellent way to turn a Daoist story into another performance metric.
Instead, catch one strong internal label: “great,” “terrible,” “unfair,” “perfect,” “ruined.” Write three short lines in a note:
- Event: What happened, in plain terms?
- My first verdict: What story did I immediately tell?
- Maybe: What remains unknown, and what one action is appropriate now?
Keep the purpose modest. You are training a gap between event and verdict. Even a gap of ten seconds is enough to change the quality of a response.
There is also an ethical use of “maybe” in conversation. If a friend has just been hurt, lead with care, not philosophy: “That sounds painful.” The farmer’s restraint is primarily a discipline for one’s own urge to narrate fate. It is not permission to minimize another person’s loss.
Takeaway
The lost-horse story from the Huainanzi teaches neither fatalism nor compulsory optimism. Its “maybe” interrupts premature certainty.
Remember the central moves:
- Facts and judgments differ. An event can require action without proving a grand story about your future.
- Consequences unfold across time. What looks fortunate or unfortunate at one moment may later take on a different significance.
- Uncertainty calls for proportionate action, not passivity. Attend to what is happening, respond to what is actually needed, and leave the ultimate verdict open.
- Real suffering remains real. Suspending a total judgment is not denying harm or avoiding responsibility.
Next, we will stay with Daoist perspective-shifting through Zhuangzi’s butterfly dream and the debate about happy fish. The horse story questions whether we can judge an event’s future; those stories will question whether we can be quite so certain about another being’s experience—or even our own fixed identity.
Can't find a good explanation? Sign up and we'll make it for you
Sign up