This past weekend, my wife and I made our way to Winnipeg, a sleepy town nestled in the Canadian province of Manitoba. The occasion? A family celebration. My niece and her husband had just welcomed a beautiful baby girl, and they insisted, almost reverently, that my wife become the godmother. It was a request we could not, and frankly, did not want to, refuse.

Winnipeg, or “Winterpeg” as some Canadians jokingly call it, is cold enough to make you question global warming, even in the summer. But despite the chill, we were warmed by the lavish hospitality of our hosts. For a few days, we were indulged and pampered, made to feel like visiting royalty. The trip also happened to coincide with my wife’s birthday, so if you’ll allow the cliché, we managed to kill two birds with one stone. And my wallet, thankfully, caught a break.

The return leg of the journey, however, was less than regal. What was meant to be a five-hour layover in Minneapolis inexplicably stretched into eight. Frustration simmered, and I could feel the familiar dread that accompanies long airport delays beginning to rise within me. My years of frequent travels had conditioned me to equate extended layovers with psychological warfare.

But my wife, ever composed, turned to me and said, “Maybe this delay is a blessing in disguise. Who knows?” She pulled out her phone and started searching for nearby attractions. Her calm acceptance, her ability to pause and wonder instead of complain, was for me, the first lesson of the day.

That’s how we ended up at the famed Mall of America in Bloomington, just four miles from the airport. Towering and audacious, the Mall of America is the largest shopping complex in the Western Hemisphere. It is a spectacle of commerce and leisure, retail stores, amusement rides, even an aquarium. Yet, what stayed with me was not the grandeur of the mall, but something deeper: a reminder that not everything that appears inconvenient is misfortune.

There is an ancient Chinese tale: the parable of Sai Weng and his horse.

In the story, Sai Weng’s prized horse ran away. His neighbors, quick to empathize, lamented his misfortune. But the old man, with a curious calm, replied, “Who knows if it’s good or bad?”

Days later, the horse returned, this time with a wild stallion in tow. The neighbors celebrated his good fortune, but again, he responded, “Who knows if it’s good or bad?”

Eventually, Sai Weng’s son tried to ride the stallion, only to fall and break his leg. More condolences followed.

But when the emperor’s army arrived to conscript able-bodied young men for a distant war, his injured son was spared. And once more, the refrain: “Who knows if it’s good or bad?”

This story is more than folklore. It’s philosophy. A profound reminder that we are often too quick to judge our circumstances, too eager to classify events as blessings or curses without the clarity that only hindsight provides.

We live in a world of immediate reactions. We want to know right now: Was this good or bad? A win or a loss? Success or failure? But life doesn’t operate on such binary terms. What looks like a curse today might be tomorrow’s saving grace.

This idea is echoed in what’s now known as The Nova Effect, a modern retelling of the same ancient truth. The Nova Effect teaches us that we simply don’t know what the future holds, and that life’s seemingly random, even painful disruptions often serve a higher, if hidden, purpose. It’s a lesson that comes up again and again, not just in fables or philosophy, but in real life.

I’ve lived this truth myself a couple of times in the past.

Of course, when we’re confronted with an unwelcome outcome, disappointment is only natural. We lack the foresight to see the larger picture, only the sting of a door slammed shut. But with time, as it so often does, clarity emerges: not every disappointment is a denial.

Some are simply detours, unseen mercies disguised as misfortune, guiding us toward something better than we could have planned.

This isn’t to romanticize pain. Betrayal hurts. Loss wounds. Rejection stings. But what if these experiences aren’t punishments? What if they’re protections? How often have you looked back and realized that the job you didn’t get, the relationship that ended, the person who walked away, all those losses you once grieved, were actually gifts in disguise?

Maybe that job would’ve drained your joy. Maybe that relationship would have eroded your peace. Maybe that friend was more weight than wings.

We tend to see pain as an end, but often it’s a beginning. The worst thing that happens to you may be the best thing that ever happened for you. You just don’t know it yet.

This is the essence of living life the Nova way: resisting the urge to label every event, to declare every twist as good or bad. It’s about trading control for curiosity, and certainty for openness. It’s about trusting that life, even in its chaos, may be unfolding exactly as it should.

Stoic philosophy echoes this wisdom. Epictetus taught that we should focus only on what we can control, and let go of what we cannot. Painful outcomes? Other people’s choices? Delays, detours, heartbreaks? They’re often beyond us. What remains within our power is how we respond, whether with bitterness or with grace.

In the end, we must make peace with the truth that we won’t always understand the purpose of every event as it’s happening. The dots only connect when we look back. That missed flight, that lost opportunity, that broken relationship, they might be the very things that shaped our resilience, rerouted us to safer paths, or brought us to deeper joy.

So the next time life throws you a curveball, the job falls through, a friend disappears, the plan goes off course, don’t be too quick to judge it. Don’t rush to call it a failure or a misfortune. Instead, remember Sai Weng. Remember Nova. And say quietly to yourself: “Who knows if it’s good or bad?”

Because maybe, just maybe, it’s life doing what life does best: taking away what you thought you needed, so it can give you what you truly do.

Osmund Agbo is a pulmonary physician.