I had a brief but poignant exchange with someone who was recommended to me. He made the comment that if we were to work together for a limited time, the work would center around Acceptance.
I mulled this over several days; one of those statements that confirms my own feelings but brought those feelings more into present moment awareness.
Today, I searched for times in this online journal when I might have written about acceptance, and I see that over the years I have had the thought on my mind a number of times to the extent that I wanted to journal those feelings.
Acceptance, to my mind, isn't about giving up, about giving up hope for something better, but it is about facing the reality of the situation you find yourself confronted with. As much as one might find the phrase 'it is what it is' a bit glib, there's so much truth to it.
I know someone who likes to think he can adjust the natural order of things if he only puts his mind to it. Why suffer with all those levels - anger, sadness, denial and so forth - before you get to acceptance? Why not just jump them all and go straight to Acceptance? Perhaps that's possible, but I don't think it is.
When I was younger, much younger, I had an abundance of positivity. I was convinced I lived in 'the lucky country' (still do) and more personally, I was convinced that I was protected by a 'guardian angel'. In terms of the guardian angel, I think this protected me, at the same time as it did not allow me to see what was right in front of me, which, for a small and vulnerable child, was probably a blessing, and a rather smart thing to believe.
When my husband told me he had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, I definitely didn't go straight to acceptance. I do wonder if the more invincible someone seems, the least likely one is to accept such a thing. In the months that followed I was sometimes sad, sometimes angry, sometimes disbelieving. Like, are you sure they know what they are talking about? I didn't so much disbelieve what I was told as I figured we'd solve it, like we solve everything.
The mind can be mad, and I remember saying to him one day, 'I can't believe you are even considering leaving me with all this mess to clean up. Where will I even start?' It was a poor me thing, a cry for help, disbelief, overwhelm, and a call to action.
It's several months later since that day, and I find respite in similar ways to those I began to use many years ago now. I meditate in a way, in a space and place where 'the problem never existed in the first place'; complete lack of ego; complete nothingness; no mind.
I explain it to my husband in the hope he will join me in this space, but he repeatedly says that he is too stressed with too much to do to take the time. I say, but it in those times that you must visit that space. Your mind and body need a break.
There's a huge benefit to getting to acceptance of a situation as fast as humanly possible. It avoids a great deal of personal pain, for starters. It's an acknowledgement that you are part of the human experience, and that suffering comes to us all. You're not special after all, there is no guardian angel and bad stuff happens to good people.
Once you hit acceptance - this really is happening - then you can see ahead of you all sort of things to assist the situation; ways to make things better. You can dig deep to polish up your empathy skills, and you find ways to nurture yourself, to accept that this is hard and you need to take care of yourself too, so you are there for your loved ones. Always put on your own oxygen mask first.
I follow a few very special people around the world who fuel me with their wisdom and kindness. High on the list is Henry Shukman and I offer you here, to those who might benefit from his beautiful heart, the final words of his poem, Resistance:
'...do nothing, be still,
stay just where we are,
sit right here,
on the very fence,
exactly on the blade
of reluctance itself,
just here, where we least
want to be, where it seems
it must hurt the most.
But it's here that the blade
already knows
what it needs to do.
And if we could just let it, then finally it could do
what it was always meant to.
And we would fall open,
until there's nothing left
in the middle
except a silent space
which everything is free to fill,
and the whole world can pour
into that one blessed gap.'
