Accepting things for what they are

One of the biggest pitfalls of humans is that we often prevent ourselves from seeing the reality of things. We say to ourselves that the things we do aren’t that bad — that things could be worse. Or when life is good, we forget to take a step back, where we are constantly looking for more and more and more. As a result, we set ourselves up for disappointment, focusing too much on the mirage we have created in our heads rather than accepting what is right in front of us.

6 min readNov 3, 2017

While it may appear that the greatest people around us are always able to see the positives of a situation (or they are not content with their situation which results in continual hard work), I guarantee you — fucking guarantee — that this positivity or work ethic only arises after they have assessed their situation for what it is. They accept it, and then take the necessary steps to achieve their goals. They are mere mortals like everyone else. They need their sleep, food and social interactions just as much as we do. It’s just that they subscribe to the notion that:

It is what it is.

Now maybe I’m naive, but I feel like most people know that certain actions will result in certain consequences — for all things relating to work, study, day-to-day errands anyways. To be clear, this isn’t me saying that everyone should know what they want to do with their lives by the age of 21, it really just means that people are aware that certain actions will result in certain consequences.

But for some strange reason, people will perform an action that they know will create a negative consequence, and then will proceed to hope, pray, cross their fingers (add any other superstitious thing to the mix) that shit will not hit the fan even though they know it will. And when shit does hit the fan, they act shocked. They ask themselves ‘what happened?’. Not preparing for an exam or job interview, or knowing that you need eat clean to lose weight but go and eat a kebab are all hallmark examples of this.

** To be clear, I am one of those people who have consistently let shit hit the fan haha.

But with things that are outside of work, study and the day-to-day stuff — ie. all things ‘about the world’, ‘aspirations and dreams’, ‘relationships’, ‘religion’ — it is much harder to see the reality of things. It is much harder to say ‘it is what it is’. I both sympathise and relate to those who find themselves in these situations — we all find ourselves in these situations every now and then, that’s just life.

Despite that, I do think it’s possible to see the reality of these ‘grey-area situations’. It’s just that it is harder to accept the reality for these particular situations as society has put less alarms and whistles in place that say ‘this is a mirage!’. And because of that, it becomes significantly harder to say ‘it is what it is’.

In terms of knowing how to respond to these ‘grey area situations’ however, that’s a different story. While I do adamantly believe that we can accept the reality of these ‘grey area’ situations, that doesn’t necessarily translate to us knowing what consequences our actions will create. And in those times where we don’t know, that is when we should hope, pray, or cross our fingers. Because with these things, we don’t know whether our actions will result in shit hitting the fan.

But if we are able to at least accept things as they are, be brave enough to say ‘it is what it is’, we can at least say we did the action that made the most sense at the time. We can say we did our damn best to make sure that shit didn’t hit the fan. We can say that we are not living a lie.

And for those times where our actions do pan out, and it turns out we did do the right thing, it makes it all the more sweeter. Not because it panned out, but because we were able to say ‘it is what it is’ and proceed accordingly.