A Spark by Innocent Mwatsikesimbe from The Vision, chapter 57

Not everything that weighs on you is a problem. Some of it is simply how things are, and Innocent draws a hard line between the two: “If it can’t be solved, then it is not a problem”. What can’t be changed is a fact of life to accept, and straining against it only manufactures stress.

The test is small, and what it spared him surprised him — a long list of worries he never needed to carry, and actions that would have gone nowhere. Once he could tell problems and facts apart reliably, it felt like “a huge load was lifted from my shoulders”.

The relief arrives twice. There is peace in accepting reality as it stands, and there is the attention it frees: a mind no longer spending itself on the unchangeable has all of itself left for the real problems.