Acceptance

Acceptance

Acceptance of a negative experience is in itself a positive experience.

Acceptance of all that is. This is the key to the concept of everlasting peace. When we accept our life circumstances, all that is and all that is done, then we are free to move forward in any direction of our choosing.

Acceptance is surrender to life’s circumstances. To stop trying to resist all that will happen to you or all that has happened so that we can release that restrictive thought and tackle life as it happens instead of having anything to blame or cling to.

Acceptance could be as simple as embracing a football game defeat. Maybe it’s the finals and you lose in the last minute with one try and a miscall from the ref. Initially you are going to be pissed, but if we maintain annoyance for an extended period of time then each game we play we’ll hold a continual grudge towards the ref. On top of that we will only cause ourselves continual strife as we remind ourselves of and our teammates continuously of that game that should have been won. When we accept the game for what is was, we may still feel the initial disappointment but it stayed in the moment, and soon after we’ll come to appreciate the moment for what it was. If we are forced to dig a hole in the back yard, we are better off to accept the challenge then to resist and resent the work.

Difficult circumstances can also be navigated with acceptance. Many people in the face of adversity or at moments where it seems unfairness strikes, choose to resist. Your partner breaks up with you, all that you cherished and loved has now been stripped from your life, the life imagined spent together is now no more. This is a painful experience, grief is going to take its course, though the extent to this grief and the distance it travels throughout your life truly lay in your ability to accept. Once, after a few weeks, or a couple months, the event will need to be accepted for what it is, once accepted, life continues, you’ve acknowledged where you stand now instead of clinging to where you were a few months ago. There have been stories of people being cheated on and they still choose to resent and rant about it decades later. How much control are you going to allow such an event to have over your life? Does it define you, is it something worth continual reflection? Reliving the emotional turmoil every time you indulge in such thoughts, wondering, questioning why it ever happened?  

Acceptance is realising some things in life are out of your control, and those things are best not to be tampered with. Sometimes it’s best to let go and let life takes its course. When we accept things for what they are, as they come and go it becomes almost impossible to become displeased. We accept things as they are for they are a part of life, when we accept we are present, not clinging to the past or fretting over the future, we are in acceptance of all that is, surrendered to life.