WAIT AND SEE
Once upon a time, there was a Chinese farmer who lived in a small village alongside his son. One day, the family’s only horse ran away, and all the man’s neighbors expressed their sympathy for their terrible misfortune. “What a stroke of bad luck,” the neighbors said. “Well, maybe,” the farmer replied.
The next day, the horse returned, followed by ten wild horses the farmer quickly adopted into his care. The man’s neighbors returned, this time celebrating this unforeseen turn of events. “How lucky you are!” they exclaimed. “Well, maybe,” the farmer replied.
A few days later, the farmer and his son were working to tame the wild horses. One of them bucked wildly, throwing the son to the ground and breaking his leg. When the neighbors heard the news, they expressed their sympathy. “This is so unfortunate,” they said. “Well, maybe,” the farmer replied.
Not long before this, a war had started, and a few days after the accident all the able-bodied young men in the village were drafted to fight in a far-off land. The farmer’s son, injured from the fall, was passed over and permitted to remain at home. The neighbors celebrated the farmer’s fortuitous circumstance. “What a blessing,” they said. “Well, maybe,” the farmer replied.
I first heard this ancient Chinese parable from Hall of Fame quarterback Tom Brady in his ESPN documentary titled, “The Man in the Arena.” (It’s an awesome series, and this story appears in episode nine.) Brady used it to highlight a valuable lesson he learned over the course of his career about the power of our perspective and the value of learning to withhold judgment on the things that are a part of our experience, either for good or for bad. I think there's value for each of us in developing that ability, too, and applying it to our own winning pursuit here today.
“We don’t have the perspective of what’s gonna happen in the future,” Brady surmised. “And when we don’t have that perspective, we don’t understand whether what happens in our life is good or bad. We just have to understand there’s a lot of things at work, and what we may think is good may not be good, and what we may think is bad may not be bad.” It's human nature for all of us to feel inclined to hurry up and judge. Brady highlights the value he found in learning to wait and see.
When we think of someone like Tom Brady - someone who’s widely regarded as one of the greatest winners in the history of sports - it’s easy to forget that his career was filled not only with moments of great success, but of struggle and failure, too. The story of the Chinese farmer helped Brady develop some emotional balance - to not get too high when things were going well, sure, but to not get too low when things weren’t going well, either. In the documentary, Brady emphasizes that we rarely appreciate the difficult moments we find ourselves in until later on looking back, because only at that point can we recognize that it was because of those tough moments - not in the absence of them - that we eventually found the success we were after.
I’m not here today trying to convince you that you should be celebrating in the midst of your struggle or finding joy in your failure, but I am saying that each of us would benefit from learning to more effectively withhold judgment on the perceived value of our current situation. We should work on getting better at learning to wait and see. That mindset helps keep us from getting too high when things are going well, and helps keep us from getting too low when they're not. That's the steady, winning approach that works - for a Chinese farmer, for a champion quarterback, and for you and I here today.
