Recently I stumbled upon a short story told by Alan Watts, which got me thinking:
The Story of a Chinese Farmer
Once upon a time, there was a Chinese farmer who lost a horse. It ran away. All his neighbors came around in the evening and said, “That’s too bad.”
The farmer said, “Maybe.”
The next day, the horse came back and brought seven wild horses with it, and all the neighbors came around and said, “Oh, that’s great, isn’t it?”