‘The Parable of the Chinese Farmer’ and Cognitive Flexibility

Perfectionists, in large part due to their general cognitive rigidity (e.g., the inability to hold multiple and seemingly conflicting perspectives simultaneously), tend to fixate on essences (Dyck et al. 2007). They spend a great deal of time trying to discover what a thing or person is at the core. They tend to believe they need to know whether they’re truly good or special, or whether someone they love is truly trustworthy. They overanalyze events and experiences to try to decipher whether or not they’re ultimately favorable or good. Learning about a thing’s essence provides, at least in theory, a sense of certainty. We can stop worrying if we know who we really are or what to expect from another.

When your life is mainly organized around managing persistent and overwhelming feelings of shame, fixating on trying to discover everything about oneself and others (when you believe knowing everything about either is equivalent to knowing that thing’s true nature), or worse, strongly (and rigidly) believing you already have, feels like a life-saving strategy. However, addressing shame in these fixed ways leads nowhere because 1. We aren’t smart enough to fully understand anything or anyone, ourselves included. 2. Circumstances can change our perspective of something’s essence. An ancient Chinese parable demonstrates the second existential principle.

The ‘Parable of the Chinese Farmer’ begins with a farmer losing his horse. As a result, his neighbors come to console him, bemoaning how awful the loss is. The farmer, serenely, responds, “We’ll see.” The next day, the horse returns with wild horses, which prompts the neighbors to return and rejoice on the farmer’s behalf, reframing the situation as good luck. The farmer, again, replies, “We’ll see.” The following day, the farmer’s son attempts to ride one of the wild horses and breaks his leg, which causes the neighbors to again reframe the entire ordeal as bad luck. Of course, and I’m sure you’re expecting this by now, the farmer says, “We’ll see.” Finally, a war breaks out and the government conscripts all of the local youths to join the effort. However, the farmer’s son is exempt because he’s injured. So, the neighbors return one last time to rejoice at the farmer’s “good luck,” to which he, as always, replies, “We’ll see.”

Black and white thinking, an aspect of cognitive rigidity, may cause us to believe that things are either essentially good or essentially bad, based on our own interpretations of what those even constructs mean, of course. Yet, the farmer knows better, keeping in mind the two existential truths noted above. He knows he isn’t smart enough to fully understand the implications of each event and knows that new circumstances can even change what each means to a specific individual or group. While each experience, on the surface, essentially appears as one thing, it slowly morphs into another. So, the farmer doesn’t get caught up in appearances or, as importantly, predictions based on them.

To be clear, I’m not arguing that we shouldn’t get excited or sad about things; always needing to take the most serene perspective is its own prison. Arguably, the Chinese farmer may feel trapped in his chronic equanimity. But that also speaks to the point about cognitive rigidity: it’s a mental cell. But, we can to learn how to fluidly move through experiences (i.e., shifting our perspectives of them, even slightly) without holding on too tightly to our interpretations of them, especially when essentializing them. An inability to simultaneously hold seemingly conflicting perspectives was the neighbors’ main problem: on one hand, the experience or circumstance was apparently good or bad, but, on the other, time could have changed one’s mind about its meaning, or, better yet, have broadened it, so one could have, at once, perceived both its good and bad parts.

The perfectionist is, unfortunately, often less concerned with the truth (albeit this is usually unconscious) and more concerned with finding a quick fix to their perpetually bubbling shame, even if it’s just outright avoidance of a potential threat. Seldom do they consider the possibility that their own tendency to essentialize is to blame, in large part, for their shame, rather than any reality around them. ‘The Parable of the Chinese Farmer’ is a reminder that we tend to form ill-considered judgments about essences, and we do so for practical purposes. Knowing what a thing is affords the chance to immediately respond to it. But, sometimes, we can be more like the farmer; we can withhold judgment, or at least allow ourselves to remain uncertain, and let life play out. Sometimes, it’s reasonable to not immediately try to protect ourselves. Much like the farmer, we can learn to better tolerate the present and, more importantly to our argument here, our fear of shame.

When the perfectionist begins to take responsibility for how their own interpretations influence the degree of shame felt, they can lower the volume of their inner critic. This means considering how engaging in black and white thinking, overgeneralization (or essentializing), personalization, and in what psychoanalyst Karen Horney called the “tyranny of the shoulds” influences their emotional responses. Worst case scenario, even if, for example, someone dislikes you, taking on the perceptive of the Chinese farmer means reminding yourself that people’s opinions, unlike yours, tend to be fickle. You can tell yourself, “We’ll see” and believe it; not knowing is one of the few certainties we get.