Yesterday something happened that forced me to make a choice. I had to determine whether I was going to accept what I could not control or get distressed and outraged about the injustice of the situation and spend hours (maybe even days) in that upset-ness.
I looked for the message. What was this experience trying to tell me?
I was reminded of something Kyle Cease once said, "Trying to fix a problem is one of the best ways to keep a problem growing. Pretty much everything knows how to heal itself. Just get out of the way."
So in the end, I decided to shift my perspective and strengthen my acceptance of what occurred. I immediately felt calm.
In those moments of reckoning, I realized that so much of our suffering is caused by pushing against the things we cannot change - that when we make the decision to allow whatever is happening to happen - giving it the freedom to be - we free ourselves as well.
If you think about it, spending hours or days stressed out, or frustrated, or pissed off, or hurt will not change what we have no control over changing. In fact, it just fuels the issue and keeps us stuck in it.
I think one of the biggest hurdles in circumstances like this, is managing the thought that the ones that wronged us will get off scott-free; that there will be no repercussions to the injustice they inflict and they will keep right on doing it to others. So we want to fight back dangnabbit!
There are times when this approach may be appropriate, one being when it will actually make a difference and cause a transformation. But once we realize there's nothing we can do to alter the situation, we have to decide if it's worth hanging onto or not. Because even though we may not always have control over what is happening, we always have 100% control over our response.
For me, I chose peace - f*ck 'em and the horse they rode in on! (okay, well maybe not the horse. 😂)