Acceptance is an interesting thing, isn't it? I hear a lot of people claim that they accept other people, but I also hear a lot of conditions on that acceptance. "I really like her, but if only she didn't talk so much." "You can be a part of our group, as long as your religious beliefs coincide with ours." Partners try to put pressure on their significant others to wear different clothes or get a different hair style or to act in different ways around friends or family. Parents constantly let their kids know (often inadvertently) that they'd be much more acceptable if they cleaned their rooms or did better in school or stopped hanging around certain someones.
Most of us would say that we're pretty accepting of others. Most of us feel that we're pretty tolerant and understanding of differences, and that we celebrate diversity, yet our words and actions often contradict these claims. Personally, I feel that I'm a pretty accepting person, but being so takes a lot of attention and effort: I'm often ready to write someone off because of a particular trait, and I have to remind myself that I'm not on this planet to judge others and reject them. Rather, I'm here to live and let live and not try to make other people live their lives in the ways that I think they should. Once I start trying to change other people--or try to convince them that they should change to please me--I'm doing something that really is quite unacceptable.
And I've done it much more than I'd like to admit over the course of my life. To give myself credit, though, I have changed this tendency, though again, it does take effort.
You are as you are, and that's something to celebrate, not criticize. You may make mistakes (we all do) and you may hurt other people (we all do) and you may be immature (we all are in some ways) and possibly even arrogant (ditto), but I really need to accept you for exactly what you are--because not accepting you won't change anything.
And here's the kicker: the fact that I accept you exactly as you are does not mean that I have to let you be a part of my life. If the truth of who you are is truly negative and/or harmful, then I would be making a huge mistake by letting you into my life. If your negativity is too strong, letting you into my life could bring me down significantly. Doing so could raise my stress level, cause me undue tension, worry me constantly, or even put me in danger. If you're the kind of person who is going to manipulate me, I accept that--but I'm not going to allow you to manipulate me. If you're the kind of person who's going to steal from me, same thing. You are who you are and it's not up to me to change you if you choose to be this way, but I don't want you in my life. Are you often drunk? Well, sorry--I choose to live a life that doesn't include alcohol abuse, and your life doesn't fit very well into that plan.
One of the obvious problems of allowing someone into your life exactly as they are is the horrible effect they can have on your life if you do so. We all know (or at least know of) women who refuse to accept the fact that their partner is abusive. We know of people who marry alcoholics because they refuse to accept that this person they love may have such a destructive trait. They deny that the behaviors they see are real, and thus end up paying a very high price for that denial--and many children pay that price, too.
So acceptance is extremely positive in at least two ways: when we accept someone for being exactly who they are and don't try to change them; and when we accept the fact that someone isn't exactly the best person to have in our lives and we make the decision not to have them as such as long as the negative behaviors continue. Acceptance becomes less positive when we accept someone just as they are, even when the person they are is someone who's bound to hurt us--in that case, the "acceptance" seems more like denial, and it truly can cause harm.
So let's be careful how we define the term, and let's be careful to whom we extend our acceptance. Remember, it's important to accept the fact that a person is addicted to drugs, but it's not healthy to accept that person "just as they are." On the other hand, if their behavior or way of being doesn't harm others, then our acceptance may be one of the best things we can share with them as they realize that someone does, indeed, love them just as they are.
It truly frustrates me to see just how much we've normalized conflict these days. It's everywhere and it seems to be unavoidable--from politics to sports to entertainment to relationships to people struggling to get rights, conflict seems to be the driving force behind our society these days. After all, conflict gets you more news coverage than simply doing what you're supposed to do. Conflict grabs headlines, while simply doing our jobs well gets us very little recognition; imposing our own ideas on how things should be gets us more attention than letting others be as they are and accepting them and their lifestyles.
Constant conflict is a sign of a lack of acceptance. We don't want things to be as they are--we want them changed. "Those people shouldn't be living that way" is an invitation to conflict from the people who are going to defend those people's rights to live as they wish. Many people see acceptance as a weakness, but it really is one of the strongest ways of living our lives that we have. When I accept you just as you are, then there's no need for me to start any conflict with you because I don't see any need for you to change--not your lifestyle, not your sexual orientation, not your mind. You are as you are, and that's fine as long as you're not harming others.
We can disagree with each other--we can even have arguments about things we believe and still get along very well. Unfortunately, though, we tend to see conflict now as a sign that we aren't getting along, that this person really isn't a friend if we don't see eye-to-eye about immigration or the Women's World Cup. Because so much of our conflict these days has to do with judgment, we all turn our defense mechanisms to high as soon as someone disagrees with us because we don't want to be judged, and rightly so. Judgment is a way of telling someone that they're right or wrong, even though virtually none of us are truly in a position to be able to judge other people. We can most certainly disagree with them, but the words "judge not and you shall not be judged" are rather timeless, though these days we may need to change them to "I'll judge you but you'd better not judge me."
This constant conflict is making it difficult to simply relax and enjoy life, to get the most out of each day that we live. It's difficult to relax when we don't know when someone else is going to judge us and criticize us for our actions or our beliefs. It's hard to enjoy the day when we have no idea what the next source of conflict is going to show up--and it may show up on social media, where we're criticized in front of potentially the entire world. How many posts on Facebook telling us that this person has done something horrible have turned out to be completely false, yet we've passed them on and helped to perpetuate the conflict with a simple click of a mouse?
It's no wonder that our young people are both hyper-critical and hyper-sensitive these days. To them, conflict is the norm they've grown up witnessing, and it's only a matter of time before it affects them, too--if it hasn't already. While they tend to put on brave faces and shrug off the fact that they face attacks on social media if they're not careful, and criticism from many people who have come to view conflict as "normal," and potential conflict about every choice they may make from politics to clothing that they wear, the truth is that this wears them down and makes it very difficult for them to truly live their lives fully.
It's difficult to write about this topic in a truly cohesive way because it's one that deserves a book or three, not just a few paragraphs. I believe that my main point is that our world needs more of us to pull back from the conflict, to allow others to be just what they are without judging or criticizing them. We can be that "safe person" to whom others can come when they want a word of encouragement or a listening ear instead of more conflict and stress. And we can teach our young people that while conflict does happen, it's not necessarily as important as we make it out to be. We don't all have to jump into every argument with our own perspective; we don't need to try to make others believe what we believe.
Our world has enough conflict. While we don't want to ignore injustice when we see it, let us pick and choose our battles so that we're involved in that conflict only when absolutely necessary, only when we're defending the rights of those who are losing their rights, only when helping others who are unable to help themselves. Let us accept more and criticize less, and let us be the beacons of peace and understanding that others can depend on when they need some peace and understanding in their lives. We can live fully in a world full of constant conflict, but doing so requires a constant series of decisions on our part, and a constant commitment to contributing to the positive energy of the world rather than the negative.
