Accept Everything Just The Way It Is

One of Miyamoto Musashi’s precepts from his book Dokkodo is:

“Accept everything just the way it is.”

Most of us have a problem with this. We see the world through our individual lens; we see things as right and wrong, good or bad, fair or unfair. And that is setting us up for disappointment.

Therefore, we should see things for what they are. Nothing is right or wrong, it just is. Nothing is good or bad, it just is. Nothing is fair or unfair, it just is.

We give things labels based on our own individual morals and beliefs. How can we expect everyone to think the same way? What might be bad to you, may be beneficial to me, and vice versa.

If someone is upset and yells at me for no reason, I know it has nothing to do with me. I don’t believe that person did anything wrong. I know that person handled it to the best of their capability at that given moment. I can’t expect them to handle things the way I do because we’re not the same person and I’m not going through what they are. I only have control over how I respond (not react).

Let’s say I had a crush on a girl but after a while she didn’t want anything to do with me. My feelings might get hurt but that doesn’t make her a bad person. I might just not have been what she was looking for and it’s no one’s fault. It just is what it is.

Maybe you’ve been working for a promotion but didn’t get it because of some technicality. Next thing you know someone else skips past go, collects $200, and gets the position. It’s understandable to get upset and say that it’s unfair, but is it? What if it had nothing to do with you or the guy that got the job? No one had it out for you and maybe things just happened the way they happened.

We tend to deem things negative when they don’t align with the life we envision.

Life is kind of like a painting. It has a different interpretation based on the eyes that are interpreting it and most of them may be close to what the painter had in mind, but once the paintbrush touched the canvas not even she was able to paint the picture she envisioned. No interpretation is right, wrong, good, or bad; it just is.