Mizuta Masahide Quotes

Since my house burned down I now have a better view of the rising moon

Barn's burnt down / Now I can see the moon.

But as poet Mizuta Masahide wrote, “Barn’s burnt down / now / I can see the moon.

Mizuta Masahide’s haiku: “My barn having burned down / I can now see the moon.

Since my house burned down I now own a better view of the rising moon.

The moment we designate the used or maligned as a state with generative capacity, our reality expands. President John F. Kennedy once mentioned an old saying that success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. 4 Failure is an orphan until we give it a narrative. Then it is palatable because it comes in the context of story, as stars within a beloved constellation. Once we reach a certain height we see how a rise often starts on a seemingly outworn foundation. The gift of failure is a riddle. Like the number zero, it will always be both the void and the start of infinite possibility. The arc is one for which there are few perfect words. Its most succinct summary may come from the wisdom in seventeenth-century poet and samurai Mizuta Masahide’s haiku: “My barn having burned down / I can now see the moon.” When we take the long view, we value the arc of a rise not because of what we have achieved at that height, but because of what it tells us about our capacity, due to how improbable, indefinable, and imperceptible the rise remains. There are advantages to certain opportunities, including their seeming opposite, that make our path as curved and as precise as an arrow’s course.

Barn’s burnt down / Now I can see the moon.” —Mizuta Masahide (seventeenth-century Japanese poet)