“It is what it is”
Oct 25th, 2008 by admin
I often hear this expression in the hospital coming from those with some degree of equanimity about the inevitable and frustrating vicissitudes one encounters in the health care system. When health-care practitioners are confronted with dreaded or unanticipated outcomes and situations are scrutinized endlessly in search of uncovering what went wrong or how things may have turned out differently, at the end of the day one is often left with the phrase “it is what it is.” Ajahn Sumedho, ordained as a bhikkhu in Thailand in 1967, and author of many books, recently wrote this in the Fall 2008 edition of Inquiring Mind:
“Instead of rejecting or denying the unpleasant side of life– death or decay, ugliness, unfairness, all the miseries that one experiences– I have found that all of these, when seen through awareness, are the most powerful learning and strengthening experiences one can have.
We really have to determine to recognize and open to that which is emotionally fraught, that which is very powerful, overwhelming, frightening or threatening. Yet through the confidence of awareness, we begin to observe how these difficult situations affect the mind, the heart. What is the feeling? It’s not right or wrong. A feeling is what it is, and only we can know it. If we trust our awareness, we know it’s like this. We don’t need to have a word for it or define it in any way, because it is what it is. This is not cultural conditioning or the ego. It is direct knowing.”