Acceptance (In Today's World)

Acceptance is not submission; it is acknowledgement of the facts
of a situation, then deciding what you're going to do about it.
-Kathleen Casey Theisen


I'll be very honest--it's become very difficult to accept the things that are happening in the United States these days.  The masked "law-enforcement" officers, the deportations of people who don't deserve to be deported, the pardoning of scores of guilty people who were given fair trials--the list goes on and on, and it's getting worse and worse.  And the unjustified murder of an unarmed woman in Minnesota seems to be the next step in the escalation of actions and policies designed to sow chaos and disorder, to pit people against each other on political and ideological bases, and to keep people from trusting anyone, anywhere.

But accept these things we must, because until we acknowledge the truth that things are not going to go back to how they used to be, we'll never be able to move forward, away from the awful things that are going on.

No matter how much we don't want to admit it, the current situations in this world make it impossible to go back to any sort of "good old days."  We may want to say things like "There's no way that I'll accept a killing in Minnesota," but when one says such a thing, then one is talking about denial, not ethics or morals.  If anything is going to change in this world, then the current facts must be accepted as a first step towards change.  Things are as they are, and pretending they aren't happening is to sabotage any chance for healthy change.

Accepting the fact that a woman was killed in her car while doing nothing wrong does not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean that you somehow condone the action.  It does not mean that you support the people who did it.  It doesn't mean that you don't care about it.  It simply means that you're willing to say "Yes, this did happen."  "Yes, I live in a country in which a man wearing a uniform is allowed to kill anyone he wants without facing any repercussions so far, and who is actually defended by many people in positions of power."

And acknowledging that fact along with all the other horrible things going on means that we're aware of them, and that we know that change has to come from the place we're at, not from the place we wish we were.  Alcoholics can't really start to overcome their alcoholism until they accept the fact that they're alcoholics.  Until I accept the fact that the kitchen faucet is broken, I can't fix it.  And when I do work on it, I undertake the job knowing that it's broken, not hoping that it's going to miraculously fix itself and be as good as it was last year at this time.

Acceptance is often very difficult.  Right now, it's very hard for me to accept that the country I've lived in for many decades is no longer the same country as it was when I was a kid--opportunities for everyone have dried up as the wealth disparities grow more and more pronounced, and the spending power of the money we earn shrinks regularly.  The amount of debt that young people have to rack up in order to get a college education cripples them, and simply sabotages their futures.  The young people I know today simply don't have the opportunities ahead of them that they would have had at the same age forty years ago.  These are simple facts, and I can't ignore them or deny their importance.

But I still hope for change.  I hope for improvement.  I know that it can't come from me, for I have no real influence on any policies or policy makers, but I accept the fact that I can't affect things directly, and I still try to affect things indirectly as much as I can.  I've taught for almost forty years because I've wanted to do all I can to help young people to know things that would help them in life, and I can keep on teaching, hoping to help people to see directions they can go and methods they can use to bring about change themselves.  I accept my limitations because I know that I can still accomplish something, but I don't waste my time or energy doing things that won't have any effect at all.

Acceptance is not submission.  Acceptance is strength, acceptance is clear-headedness, and acceptance is awareness.  Acceptance is one of the first things that has to happen before any change can be implemented, and it's one of the most important elements of our lives.

No More "Should Be's"

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.

Things Don't Always Go Our Way--A Paragraph a Day

It might be nice if things went the ways that we want them to go much more often than they do, wouldn't it?  This is what we tend to think because if things went the ways we wanted them to, then we'd face much less stress when we had to deal with things that run counter to our wishes or our expectations.  After all, if things aren't going well at work, I may have to deal with this fact by trying to change those things, working with them and becoming unhappy at my job, or even leaving the job for something else.  If things change in ways that force us to compromise our ideals or principles, for example, leaving a job may become absolutely necessary for our peace of mind.  But most things aren't that important.  Many things are simply annoyances or inconveniences, and it might do us well to practice the art of accepting things that may annoy us or frustrate us, and learn to live with a new reality that might not have been one of our choice, but that most certainly is a new reality.  This acceptance will allow us to look at the change as something that simply is, and if we want to maintain our peace of mind and peace of heart, then the best thing that we can do is accept it and move on with the task of making ourselves the best we can be.  I imagine that many, many people have been upset at societal changes--women getting the vote, slaves being freed, civil rights being recognized, and on and on and on--but those people who have thrived have been those who understood that things aren't always going to go the ways they want, so it's time to accept things as they are and work within the new reality.  And personally, I hope always to be a person who thrives rather than one who holds on to resentment and refusal to change.

Those Little Disasters--A Paragraph a Day

A few days ago, I was walking on our kitchen floor and heard a squishing sound.  That wasn't music to my ears.  It turned out that our dishwasher had been leaking water for some time, and our entire kitchen floor was ruined.  So I've spent the last few days tearing up a wet and moldy floor, scraping glue off a concrete floor, and disposing of a large number of pieces of flooring.  It's not what I wanted to be doing with the last five days, but it is what it is.  And I can't help but think of just how privileged I am to be able to have problems like this, and even to be able to fix them without worrying about what I'm going to eat next week if I spend money fixing it.  I'm also learning a lot about flooring and the floors underneath it and water damage and mold.  I'm getting practice taking off baseboards and putting them back on and fixing things up so that they look really nice.  I'm learning and growing in ways that two weeks ago I had no idea were in my very near future, and all because our dishwasher started leaking and ruined a floor.  I don't know if I can say that I'm actually enjoying the process of fixing the kitchen, but I'm certainly not hating it.

I Wasn't Enough--A Paragraph a Day

It interests me sometimes to ponder the past, to think about how I was years ago, decades ago.  In my memory, almost everything I remember is just like yesterday, but it's also a million years ago.  I think of how I was at age five, age twenty, age thirty--usually thrown back in time by a particular song that I hear, or a food that I eat, or a piece of news that I'm reminded of.  One of the commonalities of all the me's that I remember in my early life is that I was constantly cursed with the idea that I wasn't enough, that I didn't measure up to anyone's standards or needs.  I lost out on a lot because of this tendency, especially as far as relationships were concerned.  I thought that people didn't want to be around me, that they found me lacking, that they preferred to be with someone else.  And I believe that in many cases, my feeling became a self-fulfilling prophecy because I was constantly trying to be someone I wasn't, to make people like me, to force something positive to happen with someone else because I didn't trust it to happen without my help.  I no longer do this, and my life is much, much easier and much more pleasant now that I don't.  I'm fine just the way I am, and I no longer feel the need for anyone else's validation--I appreciate it when I get it, but my own happiness doesn't hang in the balance when it comes or it doesn't.  I am enough, just the way I am, and I'm completely willing to accept myself just as I am.  If someone else doesn't see it, that's okay--they're missing out on something they'll never know about, but I'm not going to put myself down or blame myself for their lack of acceptance or caring.  I like life much better this way.

Wind and Fences--A Paragraph a Day

We had a windstorm last night, and a pretty strong one--half of our fence is down out front, and we lost electricity for a couple of hours.  It still remains to be seen how much other damage was done.  It's not a disaster for us, though, as we still have a safe place to live and sleep, and we have food to eat.  It gets me thinking, though, about just how strong this planet is and just how quickly things in our lives can be changed significantly by something as fleeting as a storm that passes through in the matter of a couple of hours.  And isn't that how much of our lives are, too?  That person who's rude to us in the supermarket stays with us for a very long time in our minds, yet is out of our life pretty quickly.  That accident that we had changed everything, even though before it happened it seemed that things were going along quite normally.  Life does change, and our experiences of life change--that's just a rule of life.  While we can't live always dreading the unknown future or thinking about what might happen tomorrow, we do need to be able to deal with change, to accept the fact that the winds and the rains will hit us sometimes, and our main task after they do is to accept the fact that they were here and just go out and fix the fence.  Crying about the broken fence does nothing but add stress to our lives, but fixing it allows us to move on to the other things that are much more important.  So an hour from now, I'll go out and fix it.  It may end up costing more than I expect and it may be a bit more difficult than it looks, but at least I'll be accepting the fact that it needs fixing, and I'll be doing something about that fact.

Never a Bad Weather Day--A Paragraph a Day

It's raining a bit again today, and it's supposed to rain more over the next few days.  Someone at school mentioned the "bad weather," and I immediately thought of the idea that there really is no such thing.  Weather is weather, and it does what it does each day.  We need the rain just as much as we need the sunshine and the wind and the snow, so it's difficult to see what kind of weather can be "bad."  It may not be the kind of weather that we prefer, or it may be weather that prevents us from doing something that we want to do, but that doesn't make it "bad."  It simply is what it is, and over the years I've learned to see all kinds of weather for the beauty they hold.  Cold dark rainy days are great for sitting inside and reading and drinking hot chocolate or tea; hot and humid days are also good days for finding shelter and staying there with a good book or movie.  I may not be able to go running if a freezing rain is falling (though I have done so at times), but I sure can enjoy being cozy and warm in my home.  I think that pretty much anything that we judge to be one thing or another is simply what it is, and not what we judge it to be--our judgement does more to shape our perception and determine our personal level of satisfaction or happiness than does the thing that we're judging.  Yes, tornadoes can be destructive and even lethal, but they're part of the world we live in and they have a certain powerful beauty that really is undeniable.  Weather is weather, and whatever word we put before it is simply judgement.  Perhaps it's time to stop judging and start accepting, and see where that leads us.

Flowing with Life?--A Paragraph a Day

Sometimes life doesn't flow as smoothly as it does other times.  We go through periods of time when it's more difficult to focus, when things feel useless or hopeless, when there doesn't seem to be any "normal" to life any more.  I know that for me, these periods are marked by my inability to focus strongly on just about anything, and a lack of a sense of purpose in what I do.  These feelings used to disturb me and make me feel uncomfortable, but since I've learned to recognize them and understand that they're merely symptoms of something else, they don't bother me a bit.  I simply try to accept them and I accept the fact that for a certain period of time I'm not going to be as productive as I normally am, and I'm probably not going to accomplish much.  And that's okay.  One of the most important things I can do for myself as a person is to give myself a break when things aren't going perfectly and not expect more out of myself than I'm able to give at any given point.  As long as I'm not just rationalizing a desire to be lazy, then I'm fine with being unproductive, and I enjoy allowing life to take its twists and turns and to take me with it.  As Longfellow said so long ago, "Some days must be dreary," and I've come to accept those dreary days as being just as important as any bright and shiny day may be.

Isn't It Supposed to Be Spring?--A Paragraph a Day

The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another.
The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.
Henry van Dyke

We're about a week into spring now, and it doesn't look a whole lot different outdoors than it did three weeks ago.  I had to scrape ice off of my windshield this morning, and we've had some pretty bitter winds and grey days this past week.  But that's okay.  It's only spring in name so far, and I've learned over time to temper my wants and desires and allow myself to accept things as they are rather than being upset that they aren't as I would prefer them to be.  I'd love to come home from work and be able to go for a nice long bike ride, but that's not in the cards yet.  And that's okay.  We can't expect something major to happen like a change in season just because the calendars that we make say that it's the first day of spring.  If we want to get the most out of our days, we can't spend time and energy wishing the days were different, because they aren't.  The warmer days will be here soon enough, but for now it's important that we just take what we get because there's absolutely no way we can change it.  And once we accept the days for what they are, our own peace of mind grows and our stress levels decrease, both rather significantly.  It's spring in name only right now, and the best we can do is wait for true spring to arrive, and to love the days we get until then, just as they are.

The Kid Inside--A Paragraph a Day

After a while the middle-aged person who lives in her head begins to talk to her soul, the kid.
-Anne Lamott


It seems that the older I get, the more I'm in touch with memories from my childhood.  Recently, tons of memories that hadn't surfaced for decades have started to make their ways into my conscious mind, and I can guarantee you that it's quite strange.  I'm remembering long-forgotten things that seem to be almost the life of a stranger, separated as I am from my childhood by at least five decades.  But when they do come back, they're strong and they're clear, and they make me realize just how much trauma I actually underwent all those years ago, and they help me to understand some of the many issues that I still have to face in my daily life.  They help me to see why I fear this, why I'm hesitant to do that, why this bothers me so much, why that gets me so angry.  And more importantly, they help me to see that that young person who I was is still a very important part of who I am, and that I should be treating myself with love and compassion because that young person didn't deserve to have that sort of trauma pushed into his life in the first place.  It's important that I accept him as he was without judgment, and that I love him unconditionally and allow him to influence some of the many decisions that I make every single day.

Winter Guilt, Sort of--A Paragraph a Day

Winter, a lingering season, is a time to gather golden moments,
embark upon a sentimental journey, and enjoy every idle hour.
-John Boswell

As odd as it sounds, sometimes I feel guilty in the winter.  Not for anything bad that I've done, but because I spend so much time doing so little.  I'm a pretty active person by nature, but winter is a season during which I feel the desire to hunker down and enjoy the intimacy of the indoors and not have tons of things planned to do.  I'm still fairly active--I still go running, I still do work around the house, I still go for walks--but not nearly as active as I am in the warmer months.  I'm not a winter sports person, and that's fine.  I like to sit down and play a few games of chess online, or read a good book, or take a nap.  I'm fortunate that I don't really feel guilty about not doing things, because if I did, winter would bring out tremendous guilt feelings.  Instead, I do my best to enjoy the down time, to make the most of the time that I can relax and feel fine just sitting here with a cup of coffee or tea or cocoa and a good book or a computer.  We still have a few weeks of winter left, and I hope that I'm able to enjoy them and all that they bring, as much as I possibly can!

Running through Pain--A Paragraph a Day

 One of my New Year's resolutions is very simple:  I want to post a paragraph a day here on this blog, about things that are actually a part of my life and my living.  Sometimes the thoughts and ideas here are far too abstract, and they get a bit difficult to continue, especially after more than twenty years of keeping it up.  So here's today's paragraph:

I went running today, and things were fine for the first ten minutes or so.  Then my left calf started hurting, as in pulled-muscle type of hurting.  I stopped when it started because the pain was pretty intense, but I was already more than a mile from home, so my options were to stop and walk home, or keep going.  I decided to keep going (and please note that almost every doctor in the world would advise against doing what I did).  Why?  Because I started running again and found a stride that allowed me to run through the pain--it wasn't pain-free, but it also wasn't getting worse.  I was able to go another forty minutes before I finished, and the calf hurts now, obviously because I continued running on it.  But there are a few truths that I've learned throughout life that allow me to keep running.  First, some things are going to hurt.  A run, a relationship, a heart.  Once we accept that there will be pain in life, pain doesn't have the strength it does otherwise.  Second, continuing on even though it's painful is a valuable trait to pursue in life.  We don't want to be stupid about it and hurt ourselves more--if it had been a different kind of pain or more severe, I definitely would have stopped and walked home.  But again, once we accept that there will be pain, pain means something else when it shows up.  Third, though I hurt now, I know something important:  I would be hurting now even if I had stopped and walked home.  The pain is there, and it would have been in any case.  Sometimes the best thing we can do is not let a bit of pain stop us, but to run through it and keep doing what we're doing, even if it hurts.  We will hurt.  The question is whether or not we allow that hurt to determine who we are and what we do.

It Is What It Is: Accepting Life Fully

 "Acceptance" is one of those words that many of us seem to have problems with.  We like to "accept" on condition, which really isn't acceptance at all.  It's kind of like love in that way--we give our love freely to those who meet our standards or conditions, but we hold it back from people who don't.  We like to say that we accept life as it is, accept people as they are, accept situations as they are, but putting acceptance into practice is much, much different than truly accepting anything.

If I want to accept a person exactly as they are, then I can't impose conditions on that acceptance at all.  I can't say, "I like him, but I don't want to get together with him because of who he voted for."  We can't say, "You're a great person--once you learn some better manners, I'll be interested in seeing more of you."  We can't accept life as it is if we constantly look for the problems in life.  "I like living here, but it rains too much."  If we lose our jobs for some reason, the very first step that we have to make is too accept the loss, for nothing else can come of the situation until we do accept it.  Even if we were fired for unfair reasons, we can't fight the firing until we actually accept the fact that we have been fired.

Acceptance is a letting-go process.  You let go of your wishes
and demands that life can be different.  It's a conscious choice.
-Gary Emery

When we accept things as they are, we contribute greatly to our own peace of mind and peace of heart, for our acceptance frees us--we have no need or desire to have to make changes to anything.  It is what it is, and it's not our responsibility to improve or fix it.  And since most of our efforts to change things or people or situations to meet our personal criteria end up failing, anyway, that freedom is very welcome to us.  We're free to enjoy things as they are rather than spending our time wishing they were something else.

It's very important that we remind ourselves constantly that we weren't placed on this planet in order to change other things and people in order to make them what we think they should be.  We cannot learn from other people unless we accept them as they are.  We cannot be at peace with situations unless we accept them as they are.  We cannot reach our full potential until we accept ourselves as we are.

Acceptance of one's life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not
mean running away from the struggle.  On the contrary it means accepting
it as it comes. . . .  To accept is to say yes to life in its entirety.
-Paul Tournier

Of course, acceptance of the way things are doesn't necessarily imply approval.  I may accept someone's drug addiction because the person simply is a drug addict, and I can do nothing to help that person until I acknowledge and accept that fact.  When I accept that truth, I can act accordingly--this is not a person I would put in charge of anything important or have babysit my kids.  And it's not until that person accepts his or her own addiction that any true change can be made.

Accepting life doesn't ever mean that I refuse to try to change things for the better.  It means that I've done my best to see things as they are, and I'm willing to let life and other people do their own things without interference or help from me.  It's a freeing tendency, one that allows us to go on with making our lives the best they can be without feeling obligated to fix things for everyone else.  You are as you are, and that's just fine.  I may not want to spend much time with you because of the way you swear or the way you tend to insult other people, but that's fine.  I can tell you that straight out:  "I like you, but I try to avoid that type of talk because it offends me," and then let you choose whether or not it's worth it to you to tone down the language in order to spend more time with me.  I've made my choices based on accepting who you are, and now you have a chance to make your own choices.  I'm not trying to change you, but my acceptance of you shouldn't make me have to endure behaviors that make me feel awful.

I truly do believe that accepting life as it is and people as they are is one of the most important keys to living life fully.  When we do learn to accept life, accept others, and accept ourselves fully and unconditionally, we lose a lot of self-created stress that comes about because we think we need to control life and control people and control situations--and that's a thought that dooms us to failure and extra stress, because we weren't put here to control things--we're here to learn from things as they are, and to get to know them and love them as they are.

I accept life unconditionally.  Most people ask for happiness on condition.
Happiness can only be felt if you don't set any condition.
-Artur Rubinstein

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