No Feeling is Final
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” Rainer Maria Rilke (from the poem “Go to the Limits of Your Longing”)
Over the past few weeks, the parable below, which has long been familiar to me, has crossed my path numerous times. When such “synchronicities” occur, I find myself listening carefully for what message there might be for me.
In the case of this particular parable, I first learned of it 2 decades ago when my wife brought it to my attention while she was going through a very protracted treatment for an illness. During that time, I often found myself on a “negative” emotional roller-coaster, while her demeaner was more often one of calm and composure … of equanimity. The parable is particularly prescient to the circumstances we all are presently living through:
The Parable of the Farmer:
A farmer and his son had a beloved stallion who helped the family earn a living. One day, the horse ran away, and their neighbors exclaimed, “Your horse ran away, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”
A few days later, the horse returned home, leading a few wild mares back to the farm as well. The neighbors shouted out, “Your horse has returned, and brought several horses home with him. What great luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”
Later that week, the farmer’s son was trying to break one of the mares and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. The villagers cried, “Your son broke his leg, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”
A few weeks later, soldiers from the national army marched through town, recruiting all the able-bodied boys for the army. They did not take the farmer’s son, who was still recovering from his injury. Friends shouted, “Your boy is spared, what tremendous luck!” To which the farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”
The word equanimity comes from the Latin aequanimitās, meaning “with an even mind; imperturbable.” It was during my residency training that I was first introduced to this concept in the context of medical practice when my department Chair shared Sir William Osler’s classic essay “Aequanimitās” with my residency class. Dr. Osler considered this an essential quality for anyone in medicine, but not one that is easily attained. In the essay, he made it clear that equanimity was not a matter of denying our emotions, but rather our controlling them rather than having them control us.
In reality, any circumstance we experience has the potential to elicit a wide spectrum of emotions. How we interpret and express them, however, is up to us, remembering that no feeling is final. After all, it’s our story, not theirs, as the parable so wisely demonstrates. How might the wisdom of the farmer inform the story that you (and they) tell?