Accepting What Is
"Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is simply surrender. We spend so much of our waking lives fighting, and we don't have to. There is a lot of healing and happiness inside of acceptance, and we only reach total acceptance once we surrender," - Sylvester Mcnutt. I am a firm believer that we are here on earth to experience things we've never experienced before and to learn lessons about ourselves. Lately, I have begun to believe that I am here to learn a hard truth: I am not in control. As someone who knows I can change my attitude about a situation or look at things from another perspective, it is hard to admit that there are things that have to be experienced and let go of. It's as if we are floating down the river of life, and a big rock lies ahead that you cannot avoid. It's there just for the purpose of seeing what you will do when you hit it, basically finding out who you really are. "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced." - Soren Kierkegaard.
To fully experience reality, we must accept reality and not try to change it. This goes against everything that we know about self-help, creating our own reality, and the tricks we learn to social engineer people that we come into contact with. Does that mean that if you have a weakness that you should not work to overcome it? No, but be careful in trying to prove to the world that you are not boring or broke or lazy without accepting it first as a truth about yourself. "In order to control myself, I must first accept myself, by going with and not against my nature." - Bruce Lee. Choose to work with who you are (honesty) and not fight against yourself (acceptance). It is ok to be imperfect; try to find a way to work with what you are, where you are, as you are working towards something better.
Part of our perception of reality comes from seeing ourselves through the eyes of others. There is a lot of pain involved with being a social species. Most of this pain is brought about because we cannot accept who we think other people think we are. The constant pull to be admired for how we look, how prestigious are jobs are, how put together we are perceived, how much we are liked. We want to be a part of 'us' and not a part of 'them'. We spend a great deal of time, money, and effort to stay thin, fit, and up-to-date with our wardrobe, makeup, and hairstyles; sometimes to fit in and sometimes to stand out. We learn to manipulate others through our words, our facial expressions, body language, and eyes. Unfortunately, all this is not enough to guarantee that you will be liked. "You can't control how other people receive your energy. Anything you do or say gets filtered through the lens of whatever they are going through at the moment. Which is not about you. Just keep doing your thing, with as much integrity and love as possible." - Nanes Hoffman.
"Chasing after the world brings chaos. Allowing it all to come to me brings peace." - Zengatha. There is no way of controlling how others see you, no way to charm them into liking you, no way to prove your worth if they can't or won't see it. Does that mean that you should just give up? Maybe. While there is always room for self-improvement, there are some things that either cannot be changed (height), would be very costly to change (facial reconstruction), or might take a great deal of time and effort to change (becoming a world-class athlete). Would it be so bad if you just accepted that you are unique and let go of all that? It hurts to find out that someone, an entire group of people, or practically all of humanity thinks that you are ugly, stupid, too fat, too thin, that you talk funny, you're unathletic, can't sing, ad infinitum. "Stop playing cool, just be passionate and intense and insane and whoever sticks around is meant for you." -unknown. Others are more likely to accept you if you accept yourself first.
Accepting ourselves is one thing, but accepting that we have very little control over the outside world is another. Would you keep living the way we all live now if you could change society? "A person of good intelligence and sensitivity cannot exist in this society very long without having some anger about the inequality- and it's not just a bleeding-heart, knee-jerk, liberal kind of thing- it is just normal human reaction to a nonsensical set of values where we have cinnamon flavored dental floss and there are people sleeping in the street." - George Carlin. Noticing that there is inequality does not mean that you will be able to do anything about it because, "A bad system will beat a good person every time." - W.E. Deming. Is it ethical to not do anything to fix a broken society? No, but you can only fix what is in your control, which pretty much means you'll be working on yourself. "Sometimes the best thing you can do is not think, not wonder, not imagine, not obsess. Just breathe and have faith that everything will work out for the best." - unknown. Acceptance is surrender, but it is also faith and hope. :) Love you all!
Love and Hope,
Big Sky Baby