"I'm either really lucky or really unlucky," observed Dylan McWilliams. This 20-year-old Coloradan had just escaped a shark attack with a single bite requiring only seven stitches.

But there's more to the story. The previous July, a black bear invaded Mr. McWilliams' campsite, locked its jaws around his head, and tried to drag him away. Three years before that, he survived a rattlesnake bite while hiking in Utah.

So what's your verdict: Was he unlucky to have been attacked three times, or was he lucky to have survived each attack?

Maybe both. Or perhaps we're asking the wrong question. Maybe it's all about recognizing how seemingly opposite truths can exist at one time. And that might be the secret to acquiring this week's entry into the Ethical Lexicon:

Ataraxia (at*a*rax*i*a/ at-uh-rak-see-uh) noun

A state of freedom from emotional disturbance and anxiety, especially as an ongoing condition of soul-fulfilling attainment; robust equanimity.

That's the lesson found in the Zen parable of a Chinese farmer whose horse breaks out of its stable and runs away. "Bad luck," says the neighbor.

"Maybe," says the farmer.

The next day the horse returns, accompanied by another wild horse. "Good luck," says the neighbor.

"Maybe," says the farmer.

A day later, the farmer's son is thrown while trying to tame the wild horse and breaks his leg. "Bad luck," says the neighbor.

"Maybe," says the farmer.

The following day, the emperor's soldiers come to town and forcibly take all the young men off to war. They leave behind the farmer's son, whose broken leg makes him unfit for battle. "Good luck," says the neighbor.

"Maybe," says the farmer.

We could all benefit from the farmer's equanimity, especially when we start questioning the workings of the universe: There is no justice. Things just happen. Life is not fair. We see good people struggle while the wicked prosper. We see hard work and honesty go unrewarded while greed and corruption pay off.

But we aren't seeing the whole picture.

If you spend time doing jigsaw puzzles, you know this from experience. You get close to completing the picture, but one piece doesn't seem to fit anywhere. The coloring is all wrong. The shape refuses to match up with any of the few empty spaces left. There is simply nowhere for this piece to go.

Except, there is. After you've set every other piece in place and only one spot remains, you discover that — miraculously — the misfit piece fits perfectly into the last empty space.

But it's no miracle. It always had its place. It was always going to fit. You just couldn't see how.

Life is the same way.

Just ask the travel agents laid off from their office in the World Trade Center one Friday; imagine how different things looked four days later on 9/11. Ask the British couple and their baby son who were bumped from Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 hours before it was shot down over Ukraine. Or ask Alexander Fleming, whose contaminated strep culture led unexpectedly to the discovery of penicillin.

Conversely, ask the many people who won the lottery only to have their lives ruined by their inability to cope with newfound millions.

Did good turn into bad and bad into good? Or were ultimate good and bad simply obscured by our human incapacity to see the panorama of our lives in its entirety?

This is what King Solomon meant when he said: "The end of the matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than arrogance."

The hubris of certainty blinds us to the transience of both failure and success, both happiness and sorrow. A modest dose of humility restores perspective to the blessings and curses that cross our path, enabling us to cultivate the mindset of tranquility the Stoics call ataraxia.

We come from dust, we shall return to dust, and we never know what lies waiting around the next corner. If we modulate both the moments of pain and the moments of joy along the way, we will acquire the peace of mind that enables us to find meaning on our journey.

See more by Yonason Goldson and features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists; visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Tanja Tepavac at Unsplash