A farmer’s only horse runs away. His neighbors come to console him. “Such bad luck,” they say. The farmer replies: “Maybe.”
The next day, the horse returns, bringing three wild horses with it. The neighbors celebrate: “What good luck!” The farmer says: “Maybe.”
The farmer’s son tries to ride one of the wild horses, is thrown, and breaks his leg. The neighbors lament: “How terrible!” The farmer says: “Maybe.”
The following week, military officers come to the village to conscript young men for war. They pass over the farmer’s son because of his broken leg.
The story continues. It always continues. That is the point.
The Chinese proverb sāi wēng shī mǎ (塞翁失马) — “the old man at the frontier lost his horse” — is so well-known that the phrase itself means “a blessing in disguise” or “who knows what’s good or bad.”
The Stoics taught a parallel principle: it is not events that disturb people, but their judgments about events. Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus both insisted that the wise person responds to fortune with equanimity — not because nothing matters, but because your evaluation of it is almost certainly premature.
The farmer is not indifferent. He simply knows something the neighbors do not: the story is not over, and his judgment about whether this chapter is good or bad will be wrong as often as it is right.