Last night my flight to Barcelona was an absolute mess up, and I ended up landing at 2AM in the morning. Ryan Air, eh.
This post isn’t a rant though. Instead it is a reflection on one of my favourite stories, the old man and the horse. It goes like this:
There’s an old parable about an old man and his white horse. In this parable, the old man has a beautiful white horse. He could sell it and amass a large fortune.
The old man chooses to keep it in a stable and never sells the horse, His neighbors think he is crazy, telling him that there will come a day the horse is stolen and the man will have nothing.
That day came. Waking up one morning, the horse was not in its stable and was nowhere to be found.
The man’s neighbors were right all along and they rushed to tell the man he was now cursed because he had lost everything.
The man’s response is profound: “Don’t speak too quickly. Say only that the horse is not in the stable. That is all we know; the rest is judgment. If I’ve been cursed or not, how can you know? How can you judge?”
The people were offended by what the man said. “How can you say this?” they asked, “it is clear that you are cursed no matter what your perspective might be.”
The old man spoke again. “All I know is that the stable is empty, and the horse is gone. The rest I don’t know. Whether it be a curse or a blessing, I can’t say. All we can see is a fragment. Who can say what will come next?”
What a fool the neighbors thought.
After several days the horse returned, he’d not been stolen, but ran away. On his return, he brought with him a dozen wild horses.
Now the neighbors had to come out to tell the man that he was right all along and in fact, he’s a blessed man because now he has a whole herd of horses.
The man responds again: “Once again, you go too far. Say only that the horse is back. State only that a dozen horses returned with him, but don’t judge. How do you know if this is a blessing or not? You see only a fragment. Unless you know the whole story, how can you judge? You read only one page of a book. Can you judge the whole book? You read only one word of one phrase. Can you understand the entire phrase?”
The man’s neighbors found it hard to argue with this. “Maybe he’s right,” they said. But deep down they knew the old man was wrong. He had one horse now he has thirteen — how could he say he isn’t blessed?
The old man had a son — his only child. The son went to breaking these wild horses when one of them flung him off, landing he broke both of his legs.
The neighbors were awestruck at the man’s wisdom. “He was right we were wrong,” they thought. The old man, being too old to do much on the farm, no longer had his son available to work the land. With no one tending the farm, he would likely lose his income.
Not long after this, a war broke out in the old man’s country. All young men were called up to serve in the army where most would perish, leaving many fathers without their sons.
This was true for the old man’s neighbors who had sons that were to never return home. They went to the old man weeping, “you were right, we were wrong.”
“Your son’s accident is a blessing and while his legs are broken you will have many more years with him,” they said, “We will not, our sons are gone. You are blessed, we are cursed.”
The old man responded once again: “It is impossible to talk with you. You always draw conclusions. No one knows. Say only this. Your sons had to go to war, and mine did not. No one knows if it is a blessing or a curse. No one is wise enough to know. Only God knows.”
For me, the RyanAir flight being delayed meant I was able to stay at the Airport and watch the Euros Final. While it would have been better if England had won, and I was absolutely wrecked today, but again, I was never to know this.
Blessing or curse? Who knows….
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