Maybe so, maybe not: the parable I use after every rejection

Yesterday I was rejected for an award worth fifty thousand dollars towards growing Leaders of Today.

I had been confident. Not quietly hopeful, actually confident, which made it worse. I spent a few hours feeling flat about it, and then before bed I did what I do whenever this happens, which is reread a very old story.

The parable

A farmer had worked his land for many years. One day his horse ran away.

His neighbours came to sympathise. Such bad luck, they said.

Maybe so, maybe not, said the farmer. We will see.

The next morning the horse came back, bringing three wild horses with it. How wonderful, the neighbours said.

Maybe so, maybe not. We will see.

The following day the farmer's son tried to ride one of the wild horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbours came again to offer their sympathy.

Maybe so, maybe not. We will see.

The day after that, military officials came through the village conscripting young men. They saw the son's broken leg and passed him over. How lucky, said the neighbours.

Maybe so, maybe not, said the farmer. We will see.

Why it holds up

The story is old, it exists in many versions, and it survives because the structure is exactly right.

Every event in it is genuinely a disaster or a windfall at the moment it happens. The neighbours are not being stupid. They are doing what any reasonable person does, which is judge an event by how it looks on the day.

The farmer is not being wise about outcomes, because he does not know the outcomes either. He is being accurate about time. The consequences have not finished arriving, so the verdict is not available yet.

That is the part I find useful, and it is different from optimism. He never says it will work out. He says we do not know, which is simply true.

Three of mine

I can only see this in hindsight, which is the point.

When I did not get an internship I badly wanted, I took it hard. A few months later, on a completely different path, I met someone who became a mentor and opened doors I did not know existed.

When the podcast I poured money into did not find an audience, I decided I had failed at it. That podcast is the direct foundation of everything I have built since, including the writing.

When I burnt out and had to stop, I thought I had lost a year. That forced pause is the only reason I ever rebuilt how I work and how I look after myself.

None of these made sense at the time. All three look obvious now, which should make me suspicious of every confident conclusion I currently hold.

What this is not

This is not the idea that everything happens for a reason, and it is not an instruction to feel fine.

Losing something you wanted hurts, and it should. The parable does not ask you to skip that. It asks you to hold off on the second step, the one where you decide what the event means about you and your prospects, because that decision requires information you do not have.

Sometimes a bad thing is just bad, and that is inside the parable too. Maybe so, maybe not, includes not.

What you get from it is not comfort exactly. It is the release from having to know.

What I actually do

Two things.

I give myself a fixed window to feel it. A few hours, sometimes a day. Not because feelings run on schedules, but because otherwise I will keep relitigating it for a week.

Then I write down what is now possible that was not possible before. Not as a consolation exercise. Because when a path closes, other paths genuinely open, and they are easy to miss while you are looking at the closed one.

The rejection I mentioned at the top is a few days old as I write this. I have no idea yet whether it was bad news. Neither does anyone who commiserated with me about it.

If it is the pace of the whole thing that is wearing you down rather than a specific setback, that is a different problem, and consistency beats intensity is where I would go.

Maybe so, maybe not. We will see.