Picking A Fight

‎"When anything happens in life, there's a 3-step approach to handling it:
1. It is what it is; accept it. It will either control you or you will control it.
2. Harvest the good; there's good in everything.
3. Forgive all the rest."
Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith


I just can't let a quote like this go, and it is better to refute it here than on facebook on the poster's wall.
The past year has clearly disillusioned me, because now I hate it when one person tries to tell everyone else how to handle hard times "simply".  It makes me think that he or she has never had a really hard time, or that if they have, they've hindsight-ed it into a perfect cookie-cutter learning experience.  This is not to say that this advice isn't sound.  It just isn't sound enough.  It leaves out all the realities of pain.  It leaves out the fact that acceptance isn't about control or being controlled.  It leaves out the period of furrowing, planting, growing, and weeding before the harvest.  It leaves out the time and effort it takes to forgive, the many ways you can be reminded of pain, and that "the rest" can be strewn through every part of your life for years afterwards.  Yes, accept it.  Yes, find the good, and yes, forgive.  But don't ever rattle off a "3-step approach to handling anything" to someone in pain and expect them to see the light and smile through their tears.  I don't care if you are a doctor.  That just makes me mad.