As I’ve often mentioned, I love all teaching stories, koans, parables, aphorisms, maxims, epigrams, proverbs, and the like.

This story is one of my mother’s favorite teaching stories.

A farmer had a horse, and the horse ran away, and the neighbors said, “What bad luck!” And the farmer said, “How do you know?”

And then the horse returned, with a second horse, and the neighbors said, “What good luck!” And the farmer said, “How do you know?”

And so on.

This is a powerful story, because it really is true. Many times, in my life, I’ve seen that what I thought was great luck, or terrible luck, didn’t turn out that way at all.

Have you experienced this?