What are black swans? No, not the movie and not the waterbird. The term “black swan” is the current buzzword for those catastrophes that occur once in a lifetime, or once in a hundred years, or once in a thousand years or maybe even for the first time ever.

Black swans cannot be predicted in any definite sense. They can be natural like the earthquake in Japan or the recent Southeast tornadoes or the Mississippi floods. They can be economic like the Great Recession that began in 2008. They can include violent solar storms on the sun which may interfere with electric grids on the earth.

After a black swan event, the lives of those affected may change drastically. Such a catastrophe can change whole countries, as the earthquake did in Japan.

Some believe that efforts to avoid the natural rhythm of ups and downs make the inevitable event more catastrophic than it would have been. Flooding from the Mississippi River is supposed to occur fairly regularly, these people say. To attempt to prevent all flooding on the great river only assures that eventually a massive flood will sweep away even the flood controls.

The attempt to prevent all forest fires only means that a huge conflagration eventually will destroy a larger area than would many smaller fires.

Attempting to prevent all business collapses only leads to larger business collapses in the future, so the thinking goes.

I don’t have the expertise to judge these ideas, but I do wonder if we have come to believe that nothing bad is ever supposed to happen. We are never supposed to suffer, never supposed to be depressed, never supposed to be denied our wishes. We have difficulty accepting conditions like unhappiness, old age, death.

To accept that we are finite and vulnerable surely is a mark of wisdom. Spending our resources to fight winnable battles is worthwhile. To think we can conquer all misfortune with material wealth, however, is absurd. Better to invest in our spiritual lives and in our relationships with our families, friends, and communities. These will be of value when the next black swan visits.