It Is What It Is

I’m sitting in a local cafe at a table next to two regulars who come in for coffee at 7 am on the dot every morning. Today, the men’s heads are bent over the table, their voices lowered, but between the hissing of the coffee machine, I catch a snippet of their conversation.

‘There’s nothing to be done. It is what it is.’

On the face of it, radical acceptance of a situation that feels outside our control is the most sensible option. After all, acceptance is the first step to moving on with grace.

And yet, there’s a risk to becoming resigned too quickly to our fate.

‘It is what it is’ can shut down our creativity before we’ve truly explored our options. What looks like an immovable reality might simply be a problem we haven’t yet solved. There’s a difference between accepting gravity and concluding that you’ve taken the wrong path. One is physics. The other is just where you happen to be right now.

When we tell ourselves too often that situations are beyond our control, we can erode our sense of agency. This mindset can spill into areas where we actually do have the power to create change.

Sometimes, jumping straight to acceptance is a way of avoiding difficult emotions. Anger contains information. Grief teaches us what we value. Frustration can be the spark that ignites necessary change. If we bypass these feelings to reach acceptance, we might be forsaking the wisdom we need.

The answer isn’t in always accepting or always resisting. It’s in knowing the difference between the two. In recognising when grace means letting go, and when it means holding on. That discernment - knowing when to accept what is and when to fight for what could be might be the hardest skill of all.

Is your acceptance fear dressed up as wisdom, or is it a belief you can challenge?

Image credit: Markus Petritz