The sense of acceptance

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Editor's Note: Rafael Domingo Osle is a research professor at the Center for Law and Religion at Emory University and a professor of law at the University of Navarra

(CNN Spanish) - Most of the important things that happen in our lives have not been decided by ourselves: nobody asked us about our own existence, about living on this Earth or on another planet, about our parents and family, about being born Latin, black American or Asian. No one asked us about our height, eye color, sex, etc. But nobody asks us now about the formation of hurricanes that torment us, the diseases that stalk us, the accidents that we suffer. No, nobody asks us, nor will they ask us. Let's not be naive.

To be happy in this world, we cannot lose sight of this reality. Happiness is precisely in accepting with gratitude what is imposed by nature, what comes from the factory, so to speak, what comes totally given. Given what happens without our consent, there are three attitudes: evasion, resignation and acceptance.

Evasion leads us to not admit reality as it is. It results in mental illness, in the experience of an imaginary and irrelevant world. The second answer is resignation, the conformist but passive, negative endurance of reality. Resignation paralyzes the human being, and easily leads to despair.

The third option is acceptance, that is, the total identification with what happens, which for us constitutes an opportunity for learning and growth. Acceptance allows us to freely put our grain of sand in everything that happens to us, with optimism, with joy, knowing that if it happens it is for something that we may not understand now, but we will come to understand it someday.

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My suggestion for today is as follows. Learn to accept reality as it is, things as they come, and try to leave a positive imprint on them. That is the way to be truly happy on this earth.