“Things will happen. You can’t stop them from happening, but you can control your reaction from making things worse. React positively. Live happily.” (Ravi V. Melwani.)
I can’t count the number of times I’ve messed with something that wasn’t quite up to meeting some standard my brain had set for it. Just the other day in fact, after a very long day, I came home to see the work a contractor had done for me in my shower. His task was to paint some old faux tile to make it look more modernized. It looked great and so I proceeded to put the bathroom back together, as I had taken everything out of it for the small job. Unfortunately, the paint hadn’t fully dried quite yet, of which I quickly discovered upon putting my shower curtain rod back up against the area where some of his work had been done. The result? A small nick in the paint that to others wouldn’t have mattered, but to me it was totally glaring me in the face.
I know I should have left it alone. After all, it was only a small nick. But I didn’t. Instead, I mucked with it, so much so that I made things much worse. That small spot turned into a much larger one, one that ended up needing the contractor to come back again the very next night to fix the mess I had made, which ended up costing me more money out of my pocket as well.
This is a repeated lesson that keeps on surfacing throughout my life. I’ve done things like this repeatedly, again and again, trying to grasp control of some “thing” my brain doesn’t like and fix it as quick as possible, only to create a domino effect of the absolute worse messes because of it.
So, what’s the solution?
Acceptance.
A word whose application seems so simple, yet something I’ve struggled with immensely for a very long time. The acceptance of things that appear less than perfect to my ego and the subsequent letting go of my attempt to control all the imperfections of life that cross my path has truly been my Achilles heel. I surely still have more work cut out for me with this and I know it most assuredly begins with continuing to work on my level of acceptance.
God, I thank You for the constant reminders that keep popping up in my life to show me that acceptance truly is the answer to all my problems today, including all the ones that I continue to create and make worse each time I don’t accept the imperfections that life brings my way. I thank you for the ongoing help and guidance you keep on sending my way to work through this issue.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
