Luck or Misfortune? The story of the month

Once upon a time - and the story is true, even if it never happened - there lived a man who did not own much. The only thing he could call his own was a beautiful horse for which everyone envied him. Many had wanted to buy it from him, but he always refused.
One day the horse was gone.
People reproached the man for his stupidity!
"If you had sold it, you would have been rich! Now you have neither money nor horse, what a misfortune!"
The man said, "We don't know if it is a misfortune. We only know that my horse is no longer here, everything else we can only guess. Who knows if it is not for the best."
People laughed at him. Clearly, the man had gone mad.
But two weeks later, people were no longer laughing. The horse had not been stolen, but had run away and now returned with twelve other wild horses.
"You were right," the people said. "It was truly fortunate that your horse disappeared!"
"We don't know that," said the man. "All we know is that it's back with twelve others, but whether that's lucky or unlucky, we don't know. You can't tell the whole song from one note."
People shook their heads at the man. Thirteen beautiful horses, how could this wealth not be luck!
But soon the man's son tried to ride the wild horses. He fell in the process and broke his leg.
"How right you were," said the people, "a misfortune were the horses!"
"We don't know that," said the man. "A single sentence does not indicate the whole book."
And indeed, soon after, war broke out and the other men's sons had to enlist - except the man's son, with his broken leg.
"Oh, it was luck!" said the people, who had long since stopped laughing at the man.

And so it went on throughout his life, sometimes it was luck, sometimes bad luck, and always he kept them from wanting to judge the whole thing by one note, one word, or one brushstroke.
One day the man died. When he was buried, a stranger came to the village who was amazed at the customs here. For the people played sad and happy music, they cried and laughed. He asked the reason.
"Ah," they said, "A wise man has died and he taught us that you never know whether something is good or bad. You never know all the causes that led to an event, much less can you know the effects it will have. Maybe his death is a misfortune for him and for us, but maybe it is also a good fortune, who knows. We humans can only ever see individual brushstrokes and dabs of color, the picture of all of life can only be seen by the gods at best."
They invited the stranger to drink and eat.
And the stranger cried and laughed with them, for who knew whether something was indeed a misfortune, or perhaps a good fortune.