Thursday, February 12, 2009

Allow + Unfold = Grace

The first time I heard the word "acceptance" in a therapeutic setting, it annoyed me. Here I was, pouring my pain out to a new therapist ten years younger than me, and her main point at hour's end was that her strategy, if we were to keep seeing each other, would be to work on accepting my pain and "limitations." I remember thinking that while she was well intentioned, she clearly had no understanding of my troubles, my personality, and the amount of therapy I'd already done.

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.

It's akin to surrender, another word that a lot of people don't like. "Why should I give up what I want?" goes the rationale. Surrender and acceptance are not about giving up. They are about owning where you are. If we're always chafing under the yoke of "what is," all our energy goes into resistance. And you know the old saying, "what you resist persists."

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:

Edith Newell-Beattie said...

It's about getting in touch with the authentic self. Beautiful :)

Kookabunga said...

Thank you, Edith. It's a pretty bumpy ride sometimes, eh? :-)