The opposite of a good thing can also be a good thing. This is for me a simple statement that makes sense. But I think it is deep and not easy to comprehend and apply. The mind looks for good versus evil to clearly bucket things as “for me” or “against me.” But in life we are often choosing between what is good and what is also good. Each one comes with a certain cost. As Emerson put it: the price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
To make decisions, the mind wants a certain degree of certainty. To achieve that, it wants to paint what we did not choose or are not able to choose as something inferior, or often something bad. But that is rarely the case. I am not talking about choosing between something good and something clearly broken. I am talking about two things that are equally good but you can only have one – for various reasons.
They famous idiom says - You cannot have the cake and eat it too. But having the cake is a good idea. And eating it is also a good idea. The idiom was never about foolishness it was always about the cost of a good choice.
The parable of the King who learned to thunder
There was once a king who was noble and devoted. He believed that serving his people was his highest duty. So, he spent little on himself and his household. He wore simple clothes, plain ornaments, and had no ostentatious displays of wealth, whether before his own people or the nobles and kings of neighbouring kingdoms.
This was good. It was virtuous. And yet it cost him something he had not anticipated. And he did not even know what it cost him.
Because of his frugality, people did not know his stature. In councils where he should have led, he was overlooked. His kingdom and his people suffered for it.
Then a sage came to him and told him the story of Lord Indra the king of the gods in the Vedic tradition. Indra, said the sage, does not rule through wisdom alone.
You see the Sage was wise. He knew that even the gods lose power when they become complacent. When they grow quiet, they end up dimming their divinity. Indra, the sage observed, wields the Vajra, the thunderbolt. He moves in lightning and spectacle and divine display. It might be called out as vanity. But there was a reason behind this display of vanity. Power that is hidden becomes power that is doubted. When it is visible, people tend to believe in it. When Indra withdraws into shadow, rivals rise. So, he thunders and does not allow order to dissipate away.
The sage looked at the king and said: subtle authority is good. Visible grandeur is also good. These are not opposites they are two truths about the same throne. Kings are obeyed not only because they are wise, but because they appear powerful. You have not erred in being humble, O King. You have erred in thinking that grandeur was beneath you.
The king saw the light. His humility had not been wrong. What had led him astray was the belief that its opposite was wrong. He saw now that grandeur was not a betrayal of his virtue it was the other half of it, waiting to be called upon when the moment required.
Why this matter and what can we do to overcome it?
I have noticed this in my own life when I choose one opportunity and then spend months explaining to myself why what I did not take was never worth it. The mind does not see the world as it is. It sees it as it needs to. Whatever happens to us is not inherently good or bad but the mind, in its need for certainty, will quickly label what we did not get or did not choose as inferior, even wrong. This is the trap. It is not reality. It is just the mind protecting the choice it made.
We can use this to our advantage. If the mind is going to justify whatever we chose anyway, we can consciously direct it toward the good in what we have rather than letting it default to making the unchosen thing the villain.
I suppose this is what cognitive behavioural reframing is trying to teach us. When something happens that you did not want, try this: tell yourself it was a conscious choice you made, for good reasons, and then actively look for the silver linings. The mind will find what you point it toward. Point it toward the good.
Note: All images were imagined and created with Gemini, Google Whisk and ChatGPT.
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