It was only when Yuri and I started to see our disagreements as opportunities to learn more about each other that the way we communicated changed. We stopped fighting when we viewed the differences not as problems, but as welcome opportunities to learn more about each other.
Not fighting doesn’t mean we have no problems in our relationship. It means that we can actually talk about what is wrong without accusing the other person of being at fault.
When things are going well in our relationship, it is a celebration. When things aren’t going well in our relationship, it is a lesson. Either way, we win. This small but subtle shift in perspective gave our relationship a solid foundation on which to base our work—because we stopped feeling frustrated when we were unhappy, and we started to instead see our disagreements as a way to help us learn more about ourselves and about each other.
This perspective applies to everything in life.
We all know that life is never perfect. To be born into this world, to be alive, is to experience challenges and difficulties. We know this, yet we often despair when life isn’t going well.
We know that people are not perfect, that to be human is to err. Yet when people behave badly and show us their imperfections, we can get really upset.
When we really think about it, we start to wonder what it is that causes us so much unhappiness. Is it people? Is it the circumstances? Or is it our reluctance to accept the reality of what being alive means?
If we can accept that life is either a celebration or a lesson, then our perspective toward our personal challenges and difficulties will shift. This doesn’t mean that we will never feel sad or upset, it means that when we do have problems, we are able to see them as opportunities to learn something valuable about ourselves.
When I was producing and hosting on a radio station, I would often come home really upset from the challenges that I was facing with the people at work. One day, Yuri said to me, “Didn’t you say that one of your goals in life is to grow as person? Well, the universe must have heard you, because it has given you this challenge to learn from and grow.”
That stopped all my moaning, complaining, and feelings of self-pity. It got me thinking. He was right—if life does not present us with challenges, how are we to grow as people? If we are never tested, how will we know the level of our strength?
My challenges with my co-workers didn’t disappear overnight, but my perspective on those challenges completely changed. My problems were not problems anymore, they turned into welcome challenges. The situation had not changed, yet my feelings toward the situation had shifted, which made such a difference in my happiness.
When I look back at that challenging time in my life, I am in awe of how much it taught me about patience and understanding. I learned how to recognize my ego and to practice the art of letting go. Of course, when I was going through the difficult times, it didn’t feel like the situation was something to appreciate. However, when the circumstances had passed—as all things do, the good and the bad—I told my mom, “Gosh, these are lessons that I would have paid to learn!”
When things are going smoothly in our lives, it is a celebration. When challenges present themselves in the form of either people or our circumstances, it is an opportunity to learn. Either way, we win.
This means that we are in acceptance of what is happening—not because we have no choice, but because we know it truly benefits us.
Life is either a celebration or a lesson. This worldview provides a solid foundation for every challenge that comes our way because it encourages acceptance. Acceptance is the foundation of our happiness, much like how a structure with a solid foundation will stand strong through the worst storms. Without acceptance as our solid foundation, it will be very difficult for us to be happy or fulfilled no matter what we do or how hard we try to make things better on the surface—we will be too consumed by what is happening to us to focus our attention on resolving our problems and moving forward.
Acceptance helps us face what is happening in our lives without wishing for reality to be different. It helps us acknowledge what we feel without wishing that we were feeling something else. It is knowing that while we cannot change the reality, we have complete power over how we respond to our challenges. Acceptance helps ground us to weather the storms that will inevitably come our way.
Where there is acceptance, there is a lack of suffering. And ultimately, happiness is simply a lack of suffering.
People Can Cause Us Pain, But We Can Choose Not to Suffer
<Acceptance>
After thirty-two years of marriage, my dad came home one day and told my mom that he had fallen in love with someone else.
It was close to midnight, and I was packing for a friend’s wedding in Hong Kong when my mom called with the news. There are some moments in life you remember vividly, and this was one of them. My mom said, “Girl, your dad just told me that he’s met someone and he wants to be with her.”
We didn’t see it coming, especially my brother. My parents had had a wonderful relationship when we were growing up, and we had always been a close-knit family. It wasn’t a case of pretending that everything was smooth on the surface while things were falling apart. My parents were genuine partners in every aspect of life, raising us as a team and even running a catering business and a bookshop together for more than two decades.
Yet, when we thought about it, we could see that it wasn’t out of the blue. After my dad had decided to sell his business and retire, he started to be discontented with life. Perhaps he felt a loss of a sense of identity, and it became harder for him to feel fulfilled and significant without a clear purpose. My mom had a career, and my brother and I were grown and didn’t need him like we had when we were younger.
It had been hard for my dad to be happy. So although his affair took us by surprise, it wasn’t completely surprising.
The night my dad made his announcement, I told my friend I couldn’t make it to her wedding after all. Instead of driving to the airport, I went to my parents’ house. Emotions were running high, and there certainly were a lot of tears, but it wasn’t frantic or loud. We were talking openly and trying to process and understand what had happened and why. My dad earnestly told us that the reason he hadn’t told the family sooner was because he wasn’t sure if the relationship with the other woman would work out long term.
My brother Sean, who was twenty at the time, was still attending university. It was the most upset—and probably most expressive—I’ve ever seen him. He didn’t shout or raise his voice, but with a quiet rage he told my dad, “You punished me for telling a lie when I was young. You made me promise not to lie ever again. And now…you do this.”
By this, my brother meant my dad hiding his intentions about his trip overseas, pretending it was for business, yet all the while making arrangements to meet a woman whom he had been courting over the internet. We were all blindsided by my father’s affair, but in a way, I think it was my brother who felt the most betrayed.
Clearly, my dad had done something that had a chain-reaction effect on the rest of his family, but I don’t think he comprehended how he had just upended my brother’s world.
I was older, and in the last few years before his affair, my mother and I had had many conversations with my dad about happiness, mindset, and gratitude in hopes of lifting him up from his discontentment. So in a way, it was easier for me to see my dad as a person, separate from his role as a father.
But for my brother had always viewed by dad as a father—strong and always right. And so for him, the very foundation on which his world rested was suddenly no longer solid. When you feel like your father has betrayed you, your world changes. I think my brother lost the last of the innocence that kids have about the world being black and white.