Acceptance, take 2

I recently read a text about the 3 principal characteristics of human existence: impermanence, egolessness and suffering c.q. dissatisfaction. We will all sooner or later have to cope with these. According to Buddhism we should stop struggling against them. Instead we should acknowledge them as ordinary experiences that are part of our lives. People and situations ARE unpredictable. And we don’t suffer this kind of pain because of our personal inability to get things right. Life happens and we can’t control that. What we CAN control is our reaction.

I don’t know about you but this realization uplifts me. AND it points out once again, how important it is what we do when an event or life happens to us. It is not the event or the person who defines our pain or unhappiness. It is our judgment, the story we tell ourselves, that defines whether it will be a devastating blow OR something we can learn from. Attitudes are more important than facts. Always.

Quoting Victor E. Frankl: “between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Food for thought?