It is What it Is

This little gem popped up on my social media the other day.

The first time I heard this expression was about eight years ago. It came out of the mouth of a year 9 (14 – 15 year old) boy. At the time I was discussing with him how his behaviour choices were affecting his grades. He understood, but what he also understood was that school was not a place where he was going to succeed. At least not in a meaningful way to him.

I was a little puzzled at his choice of words and more than a little frustrated with his attitude. It took me several years to fully understand and accept his point of view. Namely that school, and the style of education I was offering simply had no relevance in his world. He was prepared to wear the cost of failing because in his eyes it was a smaller cost than the effort to try and succeed academically. Especially considering that he had a long history of not being successful. But what was more important was that he had accepted this situation. He had accepted that school wasn’t for him but that he had to ride it out.

Fast forward to today and a man I was involved with recently declared that expression as a cop out. At the time I was a little infatuated and trying to impress this man (a topic for another time) so I tried to reconcile my way of thinking to his point of view. I wasn’t really successful with this and as the universe threw some curve balls our way I found myself reverting to the original statement.

Many years ago I encountered a Catholic nun whose work involved supporting refugee families as they tried to settle into Australia with little to no money and about the same amount of support from the government. One of the statements she made almost every day was that “Providence will take care of it!” A more secular interpretation of this became my mantra in the more difficult times of my life “Things work out the way they are meant to.” or “It is what it is.”

As I write this I am contemplating some major life changes. I have been ‘at sea’ for a while and the separation from regular land based life has given me the opportunity to take stock and contemplate where I am headed with things. At the start of my journey I was adamantly saying I wanted to keep working full time for a few more years. I was putting retirement firmly into my future. But now I am remembering how I felt at the end of my last six month voyage. I have looked back at videos I made at the end of the voyage and read some posts I wrote at the time.

Back then i had this very strong sense that the “real world” of jobs and home ownership and busyness that most people give themselves is false. That we spend so much of our lives and energy building financial security, or at least telling ourselves that is what we are doing, that we forget to live. I lost that understanding once I became immersed back into the “real world”.

Along with that busyness comes the idea that we can control many things, including other people. We pit ourselves against things and try to change them to our advantage or spend vast amounts of energy trying to get people to see things from our point of view. But at the end of the day we can only really control ourselves. We can control what we do and say. We can control how we react to the actions of others and how we treat them. And that is it. When life throws a curve ball at you; like someone buying your much loved boat for example, you can shout at fate, or you can say “thank you for paying me a really high price for that” take their money and move on. You cannot change people or the way they behave. No matter how entitled and rude they are.

Like my young friend did, accepting a situation no matter how crap it is makes life more peaceful. Sitting in that acceptance enables you to make rational and more stable decisions and less hasty mistakes that you will regret later. It also, as the meme suggests, makes you less susceptible to being manipulated by toxic people. Accepting that other people’s behaviour is completely their responsibility and completely out of your control gives you the space and peace to push them away if you need to.

And so into the ocean I go, probably on my last voyage for a little while. While it is sad to think this, I am calm in the knowledge that The Universe will unfold as it should and this ending could be the start of another great adventure.