Day One.

There is an old myth about a thoughtful farmer who possessed the singular wisdom to accept life as it comes - a level of enlightenment that I happen to struggle with daily. According to the story, the farmer's only horse ran away one day. All his neighbors clucked with pity, "Oh, that's terrible!" But the farmer answered, "Maybe." The next day, the horse came back leading ten wild horses - the farmer was rich! The neighbors looked on in awe and said, "You are one lucky man." The farmer merely replied, "Maybe." That afternoon, his son broke his leg while trying to train one of the new wild horses. The neighbors cried, "How terrible!" But the farmer said, "Maybe." The next day, men from the army came to draft the farmer's son for the war. Upon seeing his broken leg, however, they left without taking him. The neighbors were ecstatic: "What good luck!" The farmer said, "Maybe."

I wish I could be as worry-free as the farmer. He knew that whatever happened was done with, and that there was no use fretting over it. I, on the other hand, will beat myself up over a stupid mistake I made first period on a calc test and rant about it for the remainder of the day. I'll let one bad hole in golf affect the rest of the my round, instead of putting it behind me. I treat every minor setback as a tragic failure and bemoan my utter lack of success instead of simply dealing with what's already done with and perhaps gleaning a lesson out of it. There's this quote that was something along the lines of, "He who looks backwards will only trip." I do that a lot - tripping.

Although, to be honest, I don't know what's more important - the present or the future. Will I get more out of life by being constantly worried, yet well prepared for the future, or by throwing all my plans out the window and dancing around with blissful spontaneity? I suppose it depends on what kind of happiness I value more - short-term or long-term. Or which has more negative repercussions if unachieved.

But look, I'm doing it again: I'm too busy thinking about life and worrying about how today will snowball into tomorrow that I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore.

Let's wait for wild horses one day at a time.

Day One.