It is what it is!

In a recent reply to colleague's email, I wrote, "I am in acceptance only because there is nothing that I can change."

I said a lot more along those lines in an email to my siblings.  I wrote there:

In any case, all our worries are for real.  We have reasons to worry about lots of things.
We will all do the best that we can in these extremely challenging times.
Should anything go wrong anywhere in our lives, we know that it is not anything that any one of us could have prevented, nor can we devise any way out--the problem is way too complex and global.

It has been a conscious struggle on my part to be accepting of the circumstances that I cannot change.  Throughout my life, I have worried about, and panicked and saddened over a whole bunch of things over which I have no impact whatsoever.

As I have blogged here, this personality of mine apparently easily came across even in the on-campus interview 35 years ago!

In one of my previous avatars (!) I was a final semester engineering student.
There was a campus interview.  I had no idea what the hiring company was and nor did I care.  I had no idea what I was supposed to wear, or how I ought to behave, and I cared not.
It was quite an interesting interview I had with the personnel guy.  He easily figured out that I was not keen on an engineering career.  We talked and talked about societal and political issues.
He then took out a blank paper and drew concentric circles.  Pointing to the innermost, and the smallest circle, he said that was the limit to which I can directly act. An immediate outer ring, he said, is where perhaps I could influence actions.  Anything beyond that was stuff that I could only talk about and can't do a damn thing.

Of course, that interview did not do anything to change my personality.  If anything, I became even more worried about everything all around me.  I blame this on empathy, though I am mighty relieved and happy that I am not an unempathetic sociopath!

The novel coronavirus has done what no other event or crisis could ever do to me.  COVID-19 has made me erase those outer concentric circles.  It is what it is.

But, old habits die hard, which is why I was drawn to this essay that asks, "If something’s out of your control, should you still worry about it?"

I read it.

I now know better than to engage with the arguments in that essay.  After all, it is what it is.  I now focus only on the innermost, the smallest, circle that limits my actions.  I do look at the slightly larger circle where somebody might listen to what I think--but, I panic no more over what happens there.

Maybe that COVID-19 has completely humbled me and I understand far more than ever before that I am not even a piece of dust in this incomprehensible cosmos.