Can YOU Teach a Horse to Sing?

A Nod to Optimism

This last year and a half of seismic changes in every way thinkable calls for changes in of our perspectives or goals. The virus has both illustrated our behavior and forced us to change.

Consider the man lying dying from Covid-19, who still insisted that the virus is a hoax. It has been sobering to witness how our collective understanding of the events exposing our lives has been impossibly disconnected. Our individual minds have been challenged to new levels to grapple with and process what is happening to our world and our lives as we knew them.

The pandemic has been a blessing for some while a disaster for others. And for most, some shade in between. Of course, it has overall been a completely shocking event that ought to have us all rethink our lives.

“All evils are caused by insufficient knowledge,” says David Deutch. “Optimism is, in the first instance, a way of explaining failure, not prophesying success,” he says.

Knowledge is based on detecting and eliminating errors. We are witnessing this. On the grand perspective - when the pandemic got on its way, we didn’t have all the information needed to stop it in its tracks. Experts have been working around the clock and around the world and have found much of the needed knowledge in record time.

Many find it hard to be optimistic in the midst of all the turmoil, not only that which is in our faces, but also what is looming around the corners  - earthquakes, fires, more political unrest, etc.

Yet, if we believe and calculate only from what we know today, we work from lack of vision and trust that new knowledge can emerge and change everything in a moment, just like the pandemic could change the lives of people on the entire planet similarly literally overnight, something most of us would have probably never believed possible.

Those who died from cholera died because no one knew yet that boiling their water could save them. “Natural disasters” of the past, such as drought and famine, left people think that the weather killed them, but it was due to poor irrigation and farming - i.e. lack of knowledge, David Deutch sums up in The Beginning of Infinity.

Optimism has a bad rap. I know. I was innocently born an optimist. And I have taken lots of flak over the years as many associate being optimistic with being a bit feebleminded or hairbrained or simply not informed.

The glass half full or half empty is a psychological matter. Being optimistic doesn’t mean one is always happy. Winston Churchill was often severely depressed and yet always looked at the future from a positive perspective.
No pessimist has ever changed the world.

Have you heard the story of Mullah Nasrudin?
It goes as follows:

In Persia many centuries ago, Mullah Nasrudin was arrested after preaching in the great square in front of the Shah's palace. The local clerics had objected to Nasrudin's unorthodox teachings, and had demanded his arrest and execution as a heretic. Dragged by palace guards to the Shah's throne room, he was sentenced immediately to death.

As he was being taken away, however, Nasrudin cried out to the Shah: "O great Shah, if you spare me, I promise that within a year I will teach your favorite horse to sing!"

Admiring the audacity of the old man, and being a gambler at heath, the Shah accepted his proposal.

The stablehands all shook their heads and laughed at Mullah.
"You old fool,” said one.
"What have you accomplished by promising to teach the Shah's horse to sing? The Shah will not only have you killed - you'll be tortured as well, for mocking him!"

Nasrudin turned to the stablehand and replied:
"On the contrary. Remember, I have been granted another year of life. In that time, many things can happen. The horse might die. The king might die. I might die.

"Or...” Nasruddin smiled, "perhaps, the horse will sing".

Such nonsense, we know that horses don’t sing. Just like we knew so many things before were not possible, because we did not have the knowledge to be able to see it. Yet. Issac Newton was said to have been the “luckiest genius” since some believed the system of the world can only be discovered once.

Mullah may be a fool, but maybe not so – he gained a year, in which time he knew all kinds of things could happen. Aside from one of them dying or finding a way to teach the horse to sing, he might escape, the law could change or he might think of a different trick to dazzle the Shah.

This is our year to teach a horse to sing. As we now know, things outside of our control can happen without warning. Bad or good. The unknown will always be part of life.
We can envision the unknown on a daily basis  -  in the light we choose.

 A bit of optimism is what we all need now, and we have so many reasons to embrace it.

Look at 2021 like you have been granted a year and make an impossible promise. Then let it go, and know in your heart that your horse might sing.

Leave a comment below if you are so inclined.