If you can accept the flow of life and give in to it, you will be accepting what is real. Only when you accept what is real can you live with it in peace and happiness. The alternative is a struggle that will never end because it is a struggle with the unreal, with a mirage of life instead of life itself. -Deepak Chopra
Where do we get the idea that life "should" unfold in certain ways? How do we come to think that our actions should have certain results, and that other results are somehow "unacceptable"? It seems pretty clear that as we grow up, we're taught some things that simply aren't true, and we're left to make our own conclusions as to how life works. We're also taught that control is very important, and that we should have control over our lives if we're to be successful. Unfortunately, though, we seem to have been taught incorrectly and inaccurately, and many of us have reached a point at which we're unable to accept things that affect us strongly, and we cause our own misery--and can make other people miserable--by refusing to accept certain things.
I just read a very long article on a couple whose son is gay. They spent years trying to "deal with" this "problem," rather than accepting him as he was. During those years, they isolated and alienated their son, and they were constantly stressed out and unhappy because of this glitch in their lives. After all, their son was supposed to grow up, get married to a nice woman and provide some nice grandchildren, wasn't he? And since their expectations weren't being met, they refused to accept the truth that was there right in front of them. And because they were unwilling to accept that truth, they spent years being very unhappy people.
I admire this couple, though, because they did eventually accept their son. And not just that, but they started support groups for people in similar situations, helping them to accept something in their lives that they hadn't expected or foreseen. And their acceptance, unfortunately, was a mixed blessing--they were able to re-establish a strong relationship with their son, but many of the people that they knew--and especially people from their religion--started to reject them because they were no longer rejecting their son and his supposed "deviant" sexuality.
And we don't even need to get into the discussion of what's right and what's wrong as far as sexuality is concerned. The simple fact of the matter is that people are as they are, and we can either accept them and be a friend to them, or keep them out of our lives. It's complicated, though--my brother was a very violent alcoholic while he was still alive, and the question I had to ask myself was whether or not I wanted him to be a part of my life. Should I accept him as he was, or accept the fact that his violence made him a danger to both my wife and me? I went with the latter because I had spent my whole younger life growing up with a violent alcoholic as a father, and I didn't want to continue dealing with an alcoholic in my life. And I certainly didn't want my wife to have to deal with that sort of thing, either.
So I accepted his alcoholism, and I accepted the fact that his lifestyle made him completely incompatible with our lifestyle. As painful as it was, I accepted the fact that I basically had to keep my brother at a distance if I was to have peace in my life (my mother wasn't able to accept that fact, and she went through a lot of hell over many years because of it, unfortunately). And because of my acceptance of a situation--instead of trying to change it, or change his behavior--I was able to find some peace and also keep my wife and me safe when he happened to be drinking heavily when we lived near him.
Deepak calls it a "mirage of life," meaning that we see what we think life should be or could be, and we want to make that a reality rather than accepting the reality as it is. The mirage for me would have been to think "I can have a great relationship with my brother even though he gets drunk often and threatens people." It couldn't have happened, though--he kept on drinking heavily until he died, and he didn't let anyone get close to him.
I had a friend once who got laid off from a job of thirty years. He didn't whine or mope, though, and he never said "That's not fair." Rather, he accepted his new situation fully, and he and his wife sold their home and moved to a place they had always wanted to live, and they ended up quite happy, enjoying their new lives in their new home.
It's easy to start thinking, "This is how life should be." It's easy to start trying to make things different than they are because after all, if we can change this person or change this situation, then everything will be just fine." Right? Personally, I really love the perspective that Lao Tzu offers us when he tells us that accepting life as it is, is one of the most important steps that we can take to put ourselves in tune with life (or the Tao).
What is real is simply what is. Much of what is bothers us, concerns us, frustrates us, annoys us, frightens us. But we'll never be able to deal with what is until we accept what is, and until we allow it to be what it is without condition. We may want to change what is, but even then, we can change nothing until we accept completely what it is. And that is a challenge that's well worth the effort, for as Deepak says, our peace and happiness are at stake.
