Three Ancient Stories to Remember Before You Decide What This Moment Means

What a Persian king, a Chinese farmer, and a Zen monk understood about change, uncertainty, and our tendency to judge the story before it’s finished.

These days, it’s become increasingly difficult to tell fact from fiction.

Modern human beings wade perilously through oceans of misinformation, disinformation, and downright lies every single day. And even when we stumble upon something that feels like the truth, we absorb it through the lens of our own beliefs—often unknowingly bending it to fit our preferred version of reality.

But I think I’ve stumbled upon an absolute truth.

One that’s just about impossible to argue with.

And oddly enough, I came to it through collecting stories.

That’s what this whole project is really about.

Listening. Remaining curious. Exploring stories and examining human lives.

I don’t do it because I’m looking to be entertained—though, admittedly, it is really entertaining.

I do it because I’m beginning to suspect that humanity has been whispering the same truths to itself for thousands of years.

From different continents. In different languages. Clothed in the robes of different religions. Separated by millennia.

Every so often, if you’re paying attention, you come across stories that feel less like coincidence and more like echoes.

While recording Season 3 of our podcast, The Story of Us: From Cosmic Dawn to the Depths of Being, I came across three different ancient stories that three different guests shared with me.

These stories don’t come from the same culture. They weren’t written by the same people. In fact, the original storytellers almost certainly never crossed paths at all.

One has been handed down to us through Persian and Sufi tradition.

Another one comes from ancient Taoist China.

The third centers on a Zen Buddhist master in eighteenth-century Japan.

And still, each one arrives at just about the same place.

I don’t know about you, but that fascinates me.

Realizations like this are one of the reasons I started The Story of Us Project in the first place—not merely to learn about different cultures, but to discover where they overlap.

We spend so much of our lives focused on what separates us that we often miss something remarkable:

Underneath our customs and beliefs, human beings have been wrestling with the same basic questions since the dawn of our creation.

And sometimes, we seem to circle back and arrive at the same answers.

This Too Shall Pass

The first story is one many of you probably already know.

A king asks the wisest people in his kingdom for something that will help him through every one of life’s challenges. Something that will be true in good times and in bad.

They present him with a ring engraved with four simple words:

This too shall pass.

• In times of victory, the words keep the King humble.
• In moments of despair, the words give the King hope.

Four words. That’s it.

But hidden inside them is something we spend much of our lives resisting:

Nothing lasts forever.

• Not our greatest successes.
• Not our darkest days.
• Not the seasons when everything seems to be falling into place.
• And not the seasons when everything seems to be falling apart.

This too shall pass.

We usually hear those words offered as encouragement during tough times. But I think the other half of the lesson may be even more important.

The good stuff passes too.

• The children grow up.
• The vacation ends.
• The career changes.
• The body ages.
• The people we love won’t always be sitting around the same table.

Impermanence isn’t only a reason to endure the difficult moments.

It’s a reason to pay attention to the beautiful ones.

Yeah, Maybe

OK, the second story comes from China. I’ve since heard several variations, but here’s the gist.

An old farmer loses his horse and his neighbors rush over to comfort him.

“What terrible luck,” they say.

The farmer simply replies: “Yeah, maybe.”

A few days later, the horse returns, bringing several wild horses with it.

The neighbors celebrate. “What wonderful luck!”

“Yeah, maybe,” the farmer replies.

Not long after, his son breaks his leg while trying to tame one of the horses.

The neighbors return. “Oh, how terrible.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Soon, soldiers arrive in the village to draft every healthy young man into battle. But, because of his broken leg, the farmer’s son is allowed to stay home.

“What incredible fortune!”… And you know what comes next.

“Yeah, maybe.”

We could keep going forever. You get it. And that’s exactly the point.

The story never tells us whether any one event was ultimately good or bad because the story is never really over. Something that appears disastrous today may redirect our life toward something beautiful tomorrow.

Something we celebrate today may eventually carry consequences we can’t yet imagine. Yet we are incredibly quick to decide.

• Good.
• Bad.
• Success.
• Failure.
• Blessing.
• Total Disaster.

We experience Chapter One and then immediately write a review of the entire book.

The farmer offers us another possibility: Yeah, maybe.

Not indifference. Not apathy… Humility. The humility to admit that we don’t yet know what this moment actually means.

Is That So?

Then there’s my favorite. This one could have been an episode of Desperate Housewives.

A respected Zen monk is falsely accused of fathering a child with a young woman in his village. His reputation is destroyed almost overnight.

He was canceled before cancelling was even cool.

When confronted with the accusation, the monk simply responds: “Mmmh. Is that so?”

And then, remarkably, he accepts responsibility for the child and raises the baby without complaint.

A year later comes the major plot twist. The truth comes out.

The young woman admits that the monk was innocent all along. (Shocking)

Riddled with guilt, the family returns to apologize and has the audacity to ask for the kid back.

The monk hands over the child. His response? “Mmmh. Is that so?”

• No anger.
• No self-righteousness.
• No victory lap.
• No revenge post on X.

The same calm acceptance he showed when his reputation was being destroyed is the calm acceptance he shows when his reputation is restored.

Think about how foreign that feels in our world.

Most of us desperately want to control the story being told about us.

• Defend.
• Explain.
• Correct.
• Respond.
• Post.
• Repost.
• Gather allies.

We want everyone to know our side. But, the monk seems almost radically uninterested in controlling any of it.

• That doesn’t mean injustice doesn’t matter.
• It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t defend ourselves or others.
• It means the monk refuses to hand his inner peace over to the changing opinions of the outside world.

Yesterday they despised him. Today they respect him.

Tomorrow? Yeah, maybe… this too shall pass.

Three Stories. One Truth.

Three stories and somehow they all circle around the same truth.

Everything changes—and we almost never know enough about the present moment to know what it will ultimately mean.

Our judgments are based on incomplete information.

When life happens, we jump to conclusions, catastrophize, celebrate prematurely, and emotionally react before we’ve even turned the page to Chapter Two.

And yet our peace doesn’t have to rise and fall with every changing circumstance.

That overlap can’t help but make me curious.

Perhaps it’s exactly what we should expect if human beings, across thousands of years, have all been paying attention to the same mysterious experience called life.

The older I get, the less interested I become in collecting answers and the more interested I become in recognizing patterns.

• When one worldview tells me something, I listen.
• When two unrelated worldviews tell me the same thing, I get curious.
• But when civilizations separated by oceans and centuries independently arrive at the same wisdom, I begin to wonder if they’re not inventing truth at all. Maybe they’re discovering it.

Maybe wisdom isn’t something one religion owns.

Maybe it isn’t something one philosopher creates.

Maybe it’s actually something that patient observers of everyday life eventually notice on their own.

I love that idea and it gives me hope.

Because if these stories are right, then…

• Today’s disappointment may not deserve quite so much despair.
• Today’s success may not deserve quite so much pride.
• Today’s criticism may not deserve quite so much of our attention.
• And today’s uncertainty may simply be another page in a story whose ending we can’t yet see.

Before You Decide What This Moment Means

Perhaps here’s the invitation hidden inside all three stories.

When life surprises us—as it always does—we don’t have to immediately decide what it means.

• We can pause.
• We can loosen our grip on certainty.
• We can resist our almost irresistible urge to label every experience good or bad.
• And when we remember that everything and every circumstance is impermanent, maybe we aren’t quite as surprised when things change.

Because they will.

The job will change.

The relationship will change.

Our children will change.

Our bodies will change.

Our opinions will change.

Our circumstances will change.

We will change.

Every season eventually gives way to another.

And maybe peace isn’t found by somehow preventing all of that change.

Maybe peace comes from finally accepting that change was part of the deal all along.

Here’s Something I’ve Been Trying

When something happens and I feel that immediate impulse to declare it a disaster—or even a triumph—I try to leave a little space between the event and the story I tell myself about it.

Not always. I’m still very much a work in progress here. But occasionally I can catch myself.

This too shall pass.

Yeah, maybe.

Is that so?

Three little phrases. Three ancient reminders to pause before allowing one moment to become the entire story.

Maybe you could try it with me this week.

Think about something happening in your life right now that you’ve already decided is good or bad.

• Maybe it’s a disappointment.
• A rejection.
• A success.
• A diagnosis.
• An ending.
• A beginning.
• A door that unexpectedly opened.
• Or one that slammed shut.

Now ask yourself: What if I don’t know yet?

• What if this isn’t the end of the story?
• What if this moment is simply a moment?
• What if the thing I’m desperately trying to hold onto is supposed to change?
• What if the thing I’m desperately trying to escape will eventually teach me something I couldn’t have learned any other way?

I don’t know and neither do you. I’m beginning to find some peace in that.

Perhaps we don’t always need to know what happens next.

Maybe we just need enough humility to turn the page.

So this week, when life inevitably hands you something you weren’t expecting, see if you can resist judging it for just a little while.

Take a deep breath. Leave some room for the story to unfold. And quietly remind yourself:

This too shall pass.

Yeah, maybe.

Is that so?

Then keep going. Because if people separated by thousands of miles, thousands of years, and completely different ways of understanding the universe all found their way to this same little patch of wisdom…

Maybe it’s worth sitting with for a while.

And maybe the truth humanity has been whispering to itself all these centuries is surprisingly simple:

You don’t have to know what this moment means to be fully present for it.