OK … the poem was brief but I have read some of your others … so here goes.

When people have rigid expectations it creates much anguish in their own thoughts because the expectation is not met. They consciously or unconsciously spend lots of energy on the thing NOT received rather than crafting a path using what they have been given. This is my personal definition of negative energy. But when you accept the things that the Universe serves up as “okay” and try to make positive use of those things then there is less anguish.

When you arrive at “Okay I’ll take it” you have set aside your expectation to see the redeeming qualities of what you have received.

I am going to venture a guess that you truly are Okay with your journey through life and what the Universe has given you. Maybe not every second of every day but after a little thought those little unrealized expectations are truly “Okay”.

Below is one of my early “Okay I’ll take it” moments … Sorry about the length.

About 25 years ago I began studying martial arts along with my 6 year old son. The atmosphere had some Zen like teachings intertwined in the lessons. I continued on for many years but my son lost interest after a couple of years. My first conscious thoughts around altering my expectations to achieve a positive outcome came in this training.

The instructor was extraordinarily flexible to the point he could stand in a door way with one foot on the floor and one on the doorframe above him. Clearly he could kick anybody in the head if he wanted. I found it simply disgusting and lamented to myself that I would never be very good at martial arts because I was short and not very flexible.

One day I was talking to the instructor about my lack of flexibility and the lack of ability to kick as high as my head which was even lower than his head. I fully expected him to send me on a series of stretching exercises. To my surprise he said “Don’t worry about it, there are lots more tricks you can learn that are easily as good and maybe even better if you got into a real fight”. He went on to explain if you could kick as high as your opponents head that was nice but more for “show”. He also reminded me that the training was as much learning how NOT to fight and to only use what I would learn if really had no other choices.

From that point I had him give me some tips that worked with my range of flexibility. I began to practice and became a formidable sparing partner but I did not know how good for quite a while.

About 10 years later, I moved to a new city and began to spar with a black belt that was even more skilled than my original instructor. You could watch him go into the zone and from there he could simply “play tag” with your body using his hands and feet and there was almost nothing you could do to stop him …. except.

I had perfected a little low kick that would land just above the hip bone and below the ribs. I could slip it behind the arm guarding that side of my opponent. Sometimes when I landed one of those kicks he would stop the action and “complain” my little kick was almost impossible to see coming because it was so low and took very little time to reach the target. He said if I was ever in a street fight just “drill one of those little kicks and it would be over no matter how big the opponent”.

I had already figured out that my little kick worked pretty well but to have confirmation from somebody at this level was pretty cool.

And all of this came from changing my expectations and being Okay with the skills and capability I had been given. The foundations of this probably started with lessons from my mom a few decades before but had not become conscious thoughts until this point in my life.

Some 25 years later I still have expectations. But I also spend very little time lamenting about any unmet expectations. I look for happiness in the tools and relationships the Universe has given me.

If more people could simply understand how much better their life could be.

If they could understand how somebody named Jenny had boiled this wisdom down to 4 words …

Okay, I’ll take it.

And then smile.