The story goes like so:

A farmer had a stallion that helped him earn a living. One day, his son left the front gate open and the horse ran away. The son was mortified at his mistake, and all of their neighbors are aghast: “This is such horrible luck!” The farmer replied, “maybe, maybe not.”

A few days later the horse returns with several wild mares following. The son is ecstatic, “I’m so relieved; what great luck!” To which his father replied, “maybe, maybe not.”

The following week the farmer’s son is thrown from one of the wild mares while attempting to break it, and severely broke his leg. All of the neighbors lamented, “what awful luck!” Again the farmer replied, “maybe, maybe not.”

A couple of weeks later, a large company of soldiers marched through the farmer’s village. A herald proclaimed that all able-bodied young men were being drafted into the army. When the company reached the farmer’s house and saw his injured son they chose not to draft him. The neighbors cried, “what luck, your son is spared!”

The idea here is that the moderate view is generally the correct view. In the short term things can look perfectly good or perfectly bad, and then life can get flipped upside down in the long run. What I love about this story is how the father models this understanding for his son while at the same time allowing his kid to experience hardship. If you want an excellent podcast that focuses on helping dads be courageously vulnerable, I highly recommend The Show Up Dad, hosted by David Mendonca. The farmer knew his role wasn’t just making money. It wasn’t just expanding his herd. It wasn’t just protecting his son from life.

His goal was to be steady in the face of the inevitable vicissitudes of life.

As Brené Brown writes in Daring Greatly: “Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our children will do than what we know about parenting.” Dr. Brown contends that the courage to be vulnerable with those we love is a practical pathway to resiliency. This is why I speak openly about my experiences with suicide. I’ve come to agree with Dr. Brown when she says: “Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.” Am I upset that I lost several weeks of work and time with my family to be in the hospital and get ECT? Certainly, but I cannot lament the lost time. I can only acknowledge what happened absent my value judgments on them.

I’m not a father, but I can learn from my father and from other fathers about how to model behavior to those in earlier seasons of life. To show how not to get so wrapped up in the perceived result or imagined scarcity of whatever may be happening in life. To instead take a moderate approach, to be vulnerable when I’m not sure what to do, and to acknowledge that what is good or bad in one moment may be different in the next.