Perhaps. Who Can Say?

On a quiet hillside farm at the edge of the northern hills, an old farmer meets each turn of fortune, a lost horse, a returning herd, a son’s injury, a distant summons, with the same unhurried words: ‘Perhaps. Who can say?’ His curious neighbor, learning to sit inside those long silences, discovers that events are not good or bad in themselves, only unfinished, and that peace comes from letting the story keep unfolding without hurrying it toward a verdict.