There’s a Taoist story of a farmer you might have heard. Things happen, and to each the farmer remarks of his fortunes, “Who can say what is good or bad?” For example, his son breaks his leg… but the next day the army says the injured boy doesn’t have to go off to war. Sometimes it’s the opposite, and good is bad. This is very important to remember.
There’s a mathematical version, too. Braess’s paradox, from the 1960s, seeks to explain how, sometimes, closing a highway can make overall traffic go faster, or adding a seemingly more direct route can actually slow everyone down. Networks in general, and here I think life itself counts, are so complex that a local solution often introduces a new problem very far away. Mice and men; butterfly’s wings.
Dorotheus of Gaza, the genial desert saint of the 6th century, told a nice formulation of this general story. Perhaps it is actually the most true version. Dorotheus said: “When Abba Agathon was nearing death the brethren asked him, ‘Are you not afraid, father?’ He answered, ‘As far as I could I have made myself keep the commandments, but I am a man, and how can I know whether what I have done is pleasing to God. For God’s judgment is one thing and man’s another.’”