Zen Psychology - It Is What It Is

The holidays are here, it is a time for families to get together. A time for love and laughter, a time for happiness but is this the case for all of us? Actually the holidays can accentuate what we do not have. It can cast a bright light on our sorrows. Lost love, sickness, death and so much more, some of us will feel a bit depressed or even resentful. It should not be this way my friends, “It Is What It Is.”

Life is like the alphabet. We “all” fall under a letter or two. Perhaps some of us fall under the letter A for auto accident, B for blindness, C for cancer, D for deafness, E for epilepsy and so on and so on. Then again, I imagine a few upon reading this will smile and think I am pretty fortunate. I have A through Z. My life is good. I beg to differ, I say to these ostriches, right you presently are, if you do not mind, tell me how perfect your life is a year from now or five years from now? Why? No one, I tell you, no one enters this world and gets out without a scratch.

Has it happened only once, twice or more than enough for us to see normally sane people who lose a job, lose a spouse or lose their so-call way of life literally lose it altogether. For them the pain and tragedy of life happens to other people. It was never suppose to happen to them. I am not one to laugh at a neighbor’s misfortune but I think these over-night sociopaths never fully processed, “It Is What It Is.”

Now we should not be too fearful or live too neurotically anxiously waiting for the worse to happen. We should go about our wonderful task of living this life of ours while also realizing, in a world of wild flowers, rainbow-colored birds, unpolluted waters and blue-eyed, merry children, it is also a world of pain.

Without world news coverage, I know a young American soldier is gasping his last breath. Without a newspaper, I know a little girl is saying, “Please stop.” Without words, without my eyes and without my ears, I know. When the setbacks come and when the raw, brutal side of our wonderful world saturates my soul, I smile in my heart , I smile in my mind, I smile with my eyes and I say, “It Is What It Is.”