Last night I started a new house sitting gig for a friend and this morning woke up at six to walk their dog. After our stroll, I promptly went back to bed. The dog didn’t, apparently. Two hours later she started barking her little head off. In the middle of drooling and dreaming, I shot up out of bed, my pulse racing, unsure of where I even was. This is often the case when you house-hop on the regular. You can’t quite get your bearings. What the hell is wrong? I thought. Has someone broken in the front door? Thankfully, this was not the case. There was a cat outside the window. I breathed a sigh of relief.

The dog did not apologize for waking me up.

Rude, I know.

Other than almost having a dog-induced heart attack this morning, I’ve had a fabulous day. I finished reading one book (about gothic architecture) then started and finished another (about one man’s thoughts on life). Then I taught a dance lesson. Then I payed bills. I guess this wasn’t fabulous–money makes my heart race–but it was nothing compared to this morning’s Fido’s Feline Frenzy Fit. Plus, since I’d been procrastinating this task for a while now, it felt good to finally get it done and out of the way.

Until next month, that is.

There’s a concept that’s been popular for a while now–what is, is. (Que sera, sera.) The idea behind this sentiment is that there are certain things in our lives we can’t change, so there’s a lot of peace (a lot of peace) in accepting life as it comes. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Byron Katie says you can’t teach a cat to bark or a dog to meow. In other words, I could be irritated that my friend’s dog woke me up this morning by barking at a cat outside the window, but my irritation ultimately wouldn’t change a damn thing, at least externally–because dogs bark at cats.

At least on planet earth.

This wisdom that things are as they are can be applied to humans as well. So often we accept that dogs bark–duh!–but not that certain people bark too. Someone flips us the bird in traffic or criticizes our behavior or doesn’t love us like we think they should, and we think they should change, that they should be different than they are. We think, That miserable sonofabitch. And yet they’re simply being themselves. I’m not saying people can’t change or won’t change, simply that what is, is–until it’s not.

The second book I read today was written by a friend and fellow travel writer, Aaron Fodiman, and he says it like this: “It doesn’t matter what you call something or how you try to change it. It can only be what it is. You can’t get orange juice from an apple because an apple is not an orange, not because the apple doesn’t want you to have orange juice or because the apple wants to keep the orange juice for itself. Apples are apples—they cannot give you orange juice. Many times people cannot give you what you want simply because they don’t have it to give. You can’t simply say they should be able to, anymore than an apple ‘should’ give you orange juice. We all can only give to others what we have in ourselves to give.”

I can’t tell you how much I love Aaron’s apples/oranges analogy. For some reason, it helps me to imagine the people in my life as–um–fruits. (I know, I know–I’m a fruit too.) This afternoon I’ve been thinking, Of course they can’t give me orange juice–they’re an apple!

Again, there’s a lot of peace in this perspective, in accepting others for who they are. For that matter, in accepting yourself for who you are–what you look like or don’t, what your talents are or aren’t, what you feel like or don’t. So often we compare ourselves, and if we don’t want to change ourselves to be like someone else, we want to change someone else to be like us. We imagine that our friends and relatives should think like us, vote like us, have our priorities. (Were they raised in a barn?!) We even imagine they should understand us. But this is all ridiculous thinking. A recipe for misery. Apples don’t understand or act like oranges. Dogs don’t act like cats.