You know what's coming, don't you? Yes, indeed - she was right on the money. The reason the idea of acceptance, as it relates to life's difficulties, gets a knee jerk reaction is that people confuse it with resignation. "If my in laws want to belittle me, there's no way I'm going to accept that!" But this isn't what's meant by acceptance.
How can we humans, with our fundamentally limited awareness, truly know how things should be? We are famously short on long-term perspective and long on immediate gratification. It's understandable: being alternatively hot and cold, happy and sad, fulfilled and bored, sick and well – it never ends. You get used to one thing and it changes. Or, it doesn't change on your timeline, or there's something wrong with it once you get it.
Ranting and raving is what we usually do in response to this "wheel of life." That's our way of venting, of saying, "I'm in pain." Of acknowledging how helpless and victimized we feel in the face of social or universal forces. That's a first step, but if we want to get anywhere, the next step is acceptance, which steers us away from victimization and toward empowerment. This is the place where we can feel ourselves fitting into a better story than the tiny one we construct for ourselves. It's partaking willingly in a larger mystery, one in which we realize that letting life lead us in this strange dance is ultimately more rewarding than a lot of the choosing we have done up until now.
2 comments:
It's about getting in touch with the authentic self. Beautiful :)
Thank you, Edith. It's a pretty bumpy ride sometimes, eh? :-)
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