IT IS WHAT IT IS
- Derek Hagen
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
❝There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.❞ -William Shakespeare
Acceptance is the starting point. Not the end.
WHY IT'S HARD TO KNOW IF SOMETHING IS GOOD OR BAD
Most of us are quick to label things as good or bad.
Winning the lottery? Good.
Getting fired from a job you helped build? Bad.
And yet, history tells a more complicated story.
There are countless lottery winners who later said the money made their lives worse. And Steve Jobs, after founding Apple, was famously fired from the company he created. Years later, he reflected that getting fired forced him to reconnect with himself and ultimately led him back to Apple, where he changed the course of technology.
What we call “good” or “bad” in the moment often turns out to be something else entirely.
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That idea is captured well in the old Chinese farmer story. One version goes like this:
A farmer had several horses. One night, one ran away. The neighbors offered sympathy for his bad luck. The farmer replied, “Maybe.”
The next day, the horse returned, bringing several wild horses with it. “What great luck!” the neighbors said. “Maybe,” the farmer replied.
The following day, his son was riding one of the wild horses, was thrown off, and broke his leg. “That’s terrible,” the neighbors said. “Maybe,” said the farmer.
Soon after, soldiers came through town looking to draft young men for war. They passed over the farmer’s son because of his injury. “What great luck!” the neighbors said.
“Maybe,” replied the farmer.
And on it goes.
The point isn’t that nothing matters. It’s that in the moment something happens, all we truly know is this: It happened.
We don’t yet know what it will mean.
WHY WE'RE SO QUICK TO JUDGE WHAT HAPPENS TO US
Withholding judgment like this is hard because humans love value judgments.
The moment something happens, we instinctively ask: Is this good or bad for me? And what counts as “good” or “bad” depends entirely on our past experiences.
Everything we’ve lived through creates a kind of filter — a fabric that new events get run through before we even realize it.
We don’t experience events directly. We experience them through that filter.
Judgments often come packaged with ideas of how things should be or how they ought to have gone. That’s why disappointment, frustration, and regret can feel so sticky.
Acceptance is the opposite of judgment.
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WHAT ACCEPTANCE ACTUALLY MEANS
I sometimes use a simple exercise called the tape measure exercise.
Imagine a tape measure that represents your life. You cut it at your current age, say, 42 inches if you’re 42 years old. You hold that section of tape, from zero to today, and reflect on the life you’ve lived so far.
Then, you throw it away.
Afterward, you pause and notice what that feels like.
Many people say it feels oddly freeing.
The exercise helps illustrate acceptance. Once something is on that tape, it happened. Wishing it hadn’t happened, or hoping for a different past, doesn’t change it. It just consumes energy.
That’s what people mean when they say “the past is in the past.”
Acceptance isn’t about liking what happened. It’s about stopping the argument with reality.
Once you accept what’s already on the tape, your attention is finally free to focus on what comes next.
ACCEPTANCE ISN'T APATHY
None of this means you shouldn’t celebrate wins or mourn losses.
Life changes. Things that feel wonderful today may feel different tomorrow. Things that feel painful now may look different in hindsight. Recognizing that impermanence can actually deepen appreciation for the good while it’s here, and sometimes even for the hard things later on.
There’s an old saying about not crying over spilled milk. The point isn’t that you don’t care that the milk spilled.
It’s that once it’s spilled, it’s already spilled.
Crying doesn’t unspill the milk. Beating yourself up doesn’t either. Both just delay the moment when you start cleaning it up.
WHAT ACCEPTANCE MAKES POSSIBLE
“It is what it is” doesn’t mean everything will work out. It doesn’t mean pretending things are fine. And it’s not a call to look on the bright side.
It simply means this: Once something has happened, the past isn’t the problem anymore.
The present is.
And in the present, you still have choices. Acceptance clears the ground. From there, you can respond intentionally, rather than staying stuck, wishing reality were different.
Sometimes, that’s the most compassionate move you can make... for yourself.
You get one life; live intentionally.
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REFERENCES AND INFLUENCES
Dalai Lama & Howard Cutler: The Art of Happiness
Haidt, Jonathan: The Happiness Hypothesis
Hanh, Thich Nhat: You Are Here
Hanson, Rick & Forrest Hanson: Resilient
Hanson, Rick & Richard Mendius: Buddha’s Brain
Harris, Dan: 10% Happier
Harris, Sam: Waking Up
Kabat-Zinn, Jon: Wherever You Go, There You Are
PositivePsychology.com: Mindfulness X
Reivich, Karen & Andrew Shatte: The Resilience Factor
Yalom, Irvin: Staring at the Sun
