My favorite book of the Bible is Ecclesiastes. It says it was written by King Solomon but in those days, it was the custom, I am told, to say the author was some famous person in the hope that the message would be taken more to heart.
Most people are familiar with the early passage about appropriate seasons for this and that. “For every thing, there is a season…A time to be born and a time to die…A time to kill and a time to heal” This idea is similar to the Buddhist idea that “Everything changes”. What is salient today will be forgotten tomorrow. The Preacher, as the author of Ecclesiastes calls himself, says “there is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things to that to come with those that shall come after.”
The opening lines have much to say to moderns. “Vanity of vanities…all is vanity.” This is similar to “Everything changes” and to “Don’t sweat the small stuff and it is all small stuff.”
What got my attention first was the part that is quoted in the beginning of “The Advanced Theory of Statistics”: in the verse with the prophetic numbers 9:11, is this useful passage:
I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Isn’t this marvelous wording? Isn’t this the insight we all come to? That time wears us and our things out, and chance (often called “fortune”) plays with us. Little David slays Goliath. A mouse removes a splinter from the lion’s paw. It is refreshing to find that, centuries before Christ, someone realized the trickiness, the unpredictability, of life.
This up and down of luck is emphasized in the Chinese (and Jewish) story:
One day, the farmer's horse ran away, and all the neighbors gathered in the evening and said ‘that’s too bad.’
He said ‘maybe.’
Next day, the horse came back and brought with it seven wild horses. ‘Wow!’ they said, ‘Aren’t you lucky!’
He said ‘maybe.’
The next day, his son grappled with one of these wild horses and tried to break it in, and he got thrown and broke his leg. And all the neighbors said ‘oh, that’s too bad that your son broke his leg.’
He said, ‘maybe.’ The next day, the conscription officers came around, gathering young men for the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. And the visitors all came around and said ‘Isn’t that great! Your son got out.’
He said, ‘maybe.’
He said ‘maybe.’
Next day, the horse came back and brought with it seven wild horses. ‘Wow!’ they said, ‘Aren’t you lucky!’
He said ‘maybe.’
The next day, his son grappled with one of these wild horses and tried to break it in, and he got thrown and broke his leg. And all the neighbors said ‘oh, that’s too bad that your son broke his leg.’
He said, ‘maybe.’ The next day, the conscription officers came around, gathering young men for the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. And the visitors all came around and said ‘Isn’t that great! Your son got out.’
He said, ‘maybe.’
Once a busy king demanded that his scholars reduce all knowledge to a single page. They did and presented him with their work. He sent them back to work to reduce that page to a single sentence. Upon receiving the sentence, he told them to reduce it to one word. They did and gave him the word,
“Maybe”
