Imagine a football team.
It wins almost every match. It lives at the top of the table.
Its fans proclaim it to be the best team in the world, and although you might wish that weren’t true, your arguments fall flat – they have the numbers to prove it.
Now imagine that this streak lasts for a while – several centuries – before things very slowly begin to decline. It starts with the team drawing a little more often than it did. Then it loses a game – which is practically unheard of – before losing another. And then another. Before long, you are looking a pretty average football team.
Except that this doesn’t seem to have registered with the fans. Or the players. Or the manager. Or the board of directors. As far as they’re concerned, the team is still number one in the league. It’s still winning every game. And it’s going to last forever. And anybody with the audacity to question this is branded a liar, a traitor, and a heretic.
As everybody involved with the team continues to see things through rose-tinted spectacles, its fortunes continue their descent. The team slips further and further down the table, gets relegated again and again, until one day, there is no further left to fall, and nowhere left to hide.
You’ve just imagined Britain in 2019.
Reality is my drug
“Reality is my drug…
… Reality has its own power—you can turn your back on it, but it will find you in the end, and your inability to cope with it will be your ruin.”
50 Cent – “The 50th Law”
What causes misery? Fearing reality – what ‘is’ – and turning away from it.
What causes peace? Seeking, loving, embracing reality.
Whatever you confront today, you need only one sentence with which to confront it: “It is what it is.”
Reality cannot hurt you – only that which is false.
If what you confront is not what you expected, alter your expectations.
If what you confront is not what you desired, alter your desires.
There is absolutely nothing to be gained from blinding yourself to what it is, and everything in the known universe to gain from willingly opening up your eyes and accepting what you see.
It is what it is. It is what it is. It is what it is.