When Thomas Edison was aged 67,one day after another day at the lab, he returned home. After dinner, a man arrived at this house with urgent news: A fire had broken out at the research campus a few miles away.The fire was so enormous that even fire engines could not stop the fire. Fueled by chemicals, green and yellow flames shot up high in the sky, threatening to destroy the entire research lab Thomas Edison had spent his life building.When Edison reached to the scene, he immediately told his son, “Go get your mother and all her friends, they’ll never see a fire like this again. We were definitely not expecting such answer from the inventor who had worked toilsomely for years in the lab. He lost much of what he’d been working on his whole lifetime, and instead of getting disappointed , he accepted it and tried to make the best with it. Instead of crying over it, he started rebuilding what the fire destroyed the next day. That's nonresistance. This example shows that we should have acceptance . Edison started rebuilding everything the very next day. He accepted his fate and tried to make the best with it. And that’s what the lesson is Don’t fight with reality, but accept rather than fight every little thing .We should have the acceptance in us If we deny reality, if we think things are going against us, if we fight with what is, then we will face a lots of problems and frustrations. Therefore, we should not wish for reality to be different, but accept it as it is.“If this is the will of nature, then so be it. And it doesn’t matter whether we call it God, Nature, and Fate—but we must acknowledge that there’s something bigger than us, and that we don’t control everything that happens around us.The art of acquiescence is about the willing acceptance of external events. Accept even what the majority of people would judge as “bad.”
Epictetus says that as philosophers we should adapt to whatever happens, so that nothing happens against our will and nothing that we wish for fails to happen. Bring your will into harmony with what’s going on. “Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant,” as Seneca put it.Remember the dog leashed to a cart metaphor? The dog can either enjoy the ride and run smoothly alongside the cart, or he can stubbornly resist the direction of the cart while being dragged behind anyway. If we resist what happens, then we get dragged behind just like that dog. So its important to take lesson from the incident and try to implement in our lives.Not only these thing are important to understand but also to instil in our soul and minds .
