Good news and bad news are just early drafts.
There is an old Chinese story about a farmer who owned one horse. It was the only horse in the whole village, and he used it for everything. One morning, the horse ran off. The villagers came to tell him how terrible that was. The farmer didn’t argue. He just said that time would tell.
One morning, the horse ran away. The villagers came to offer their sympathy. They told him it was terrible luck, that he must feel cursed. The farmer listened and simply said that time would tell.
A few days later, the horse came back with two wild horses following behind it. The villagers changed their tune. They told him he was lucky now. The farmer gave the same answer. Time would tell.
While his son was trying to tame one of the new horses, the animal kicked him and knocked him out cold. Again the villagers came, full of sympathy. Again the farmer said that time would tell.
A week later, the army arrived to take every young man to the front lines. Every boy in the village was taken. Except the farmer’s injured son.
Good. Bad. Time told.
Life works the same way.
Something that feels awful in the moment might end up opening a door you never would have walked through. Something that feels perfect at first might come with a price you only see later. We judge moments too fast, and then we live inside those judgments as if they are facts.
I’ve done it too. Something goes wrong and I immediately decide what it means. I jump to conclusions. I tell myself a story about failure or loss long before the situation even settles. Then months later I look back and see the event completely differently. What looked like the end turned out to be a push in the right direction.
That’s the hidden cost of quick judgment. We trap ourselves in a story that isn’t finished yet. We rush to label things because we want certainty. We want to know what it all means right now. But life doesn’t work on our timeline. Meaning takes time to show itself.
So when something breaks, when someone leaves, when plans fall apart, try to hold the moment loosely. You don’t need to name it right away. You don’t need to decide whether it was good or bad in the first hour, or even the first month. Let it sit. Let time show you what it becomes.
And when things go right, enjoy it. Be grateful. But don’t assume the good will stay good forever. Every win carries its own responsibility, and every blessing asks for care.
The farmer wasn’t being mysterious. He understood something most of us forget.
Life takes time to reveal what it really is.
Good. Bad. Time will tell.
And as you watch your own story unfold, you slowly realise something else. Life was never meant to feel easy.
It was meant to be earned.
You don’t need to understand now.
You just need to keep walking.