This previous weekend, my spouse and I made our option to Winnipeg, a sleepy city nestled within the Canadian province of Manitoba. The event? A household celebration. My niece and her husband had simply welcomed a stupendous child lady, they usually insisted, virtually reverently, that my spouse turn out to be the godmother. It was a request we couldn’t, and admittedly, didn’t wish to, refuse.
Winnipeg, or “Winterpeg” as some Canadians jokingly name it, is chilly sufficient to make you query international warming, even in the summertime. However regardless of the nippiness, we have been warmed by the lavish hospitality of our hosts. For a number of days, we have been indulged and pampered, made to really feel like visiting royalty. The journey additionally occurred to coincide with my spouse’s birthday, so should you’ll enable the cliché, we managed to kill two birds with one stone. And my pockets, fortunately, caught a break.
The return leg of the journey, nonetheless, was lower than regal. What was meant to be a five-hour layover in Minneapolis inexplicably stretched into eight. Frustration simmered, and I may really feel the acquainted dread that accompanies lengthy airport delays starting to rise inside me. My years of frequent travels had conditioned me to equate prolonged layovers with psychological warfare.
However my spouse, ever composed, turned to me and stated, “Possibly this delay is a blessing in disguise. Who is aware of?” She pulled out her telephone and began looking for close by points of interest. Her calm acceptance, her skill to pause and surprise as an alternative of complain, was for me, the primary lesson of the day.
That’s how we ended up on the famed Mall of America in Bloomington, simply 4 miles from the airport. Towering and audacious, the Mall of America is the biggest purchasing advanced within the Western Hemisphere. It’s a spectacle of commerce and leisure, retail shops, amusement rides, even an aquarium. But, what stayed with me was not the grandeur of the mall, however one thing deeper: a reminder that not all the things that seems inconvenient is misfortune.
There’s an historical Chinese language story: the parable of Sai Weng and his horse.
Within the story, Sai Weng’s prized horse ran away. His neighbors, fast to empathize, lamented his misfortune. However the outdated man, with a curious calm, replied, “Who is aware of if it’s good or dangerous?”
Days later, the horse returned, this time with a wild stallion in tow. The neighbors celebrated his success, however once more, he responded, “Who is aware of if it’s good or dangerous?”
Ultimately, Sai Weng’s son tried to trip the stallion, solely to fall and break his leg. Extra condolences adopted.
However when the emperor’s military arrived to conscript able-bodied younger males for a distant battle, his injured son was spared. And as soon as extra, the chorus: “Who is aware of if it’s good or dangerous?”
This story is greater than folklore. It’s philosophy. A profound reminder that we are sometimes too fast to guage our circumstances, too desperate to classify occasions as blessings or curses with out the readability that solely hindsight supplies.
We reside in a world of fast reactions. We wish to know proper now: Was this good or dangerous? A win or a loss? Success or failure? However life doesn’t function on such binary phrases. What seems like a curse at this time may be tomorrow’s saving grace.
This concept is echoed in what’s now generally known as The Nova Impact, a contemporary retelling of the identical historical reality. The Nova Impact teaches us that we merely don’t know what the longer term holds, and that life’s seemingly random, even painful disruptions usually serve the next, if hidden, function. It’s a lesson that comes up many times, not simply in fables or philosophy, however in actual life.
I’ve lived this reality myself a few instances previously.
After all, after we’re confronted with an unwelcome end result, disappointment is simply pure. We lack the foresight to see the bigger image, solely the sting of a door slammed shut. However with time, because it so usually does, readability emerges: not each disappointment is a denial.
Some are merely detours, unseen mercies disguised as misfortune, guiding us towards one thing higher than we may have deliberate.
This isn’t to romanticize ache. Betrayal hurts. Loss wounds. Rejection stings. However what if these experiences aren’t punishments? What in the event that they’re protections? How usually have you ever seemed again and realized that the job you didn’t get, the connection that ended, the one that walked away, all these losses you as soon as grieved, have been really items in disguise?
Possibly that job would’ve drained your pleasure. Possibly that relationship would have eroded your peace. Possibly that buddy was extra weight than wings.
We are inclined to see ache as an finish, however usually it’s a starting. The worst factor that occurs to you might be one of the best factor that ever occurred for you. You simply don’t understand it but.
That is the essence of dwelling life the Nova approach: resisting the urge to label each occasion, to declare each twist pretty much as good or dangerous. It’s about buying and selling management for curiosity, and certainty for openness. It’s about trusting that life, even in its chaos, could also be unfolding precisely because it ought to.
Stoic philosophy echoes this knowledge. Epictetus taught that we should always focus solely on what we are able to management, and let go of what we can not. Painful outcomes? Different individuals’s selections? Delays, detours, heartbreaks? They’re usually past us. What stays inside our energy is how we reply, whether or not with bitterness or with grace.
Ultimately, we should make peace with the reality that we received’t all the time perceive the aim of each occasion because it’s occurring. The dots solely join after we look again. That missed flight, that misplaced alternative, that damaged relationship, they may be the very issues that formed our resilience, rerouted us to safer paths, or introduced us to deeper pleasure.
So the following time life throws you a curveball, the job falls via, a buddy disappears, the plan goes astray, don’t be too fast to guage it. Don’t rush to name it a failure or a misfortune. As a substitute, bear in mind Sai Weng. Bear in mind Nova. And say quietly to your self: “Who is aware of if it’s good or dangerous?”
As a result of possibly, simply possibly, it’s life doing what life does greatest: taking away what you thought you wanted, so it may give you what you really do.
Osmund Agbo is a pulmonary doctor.
