Volume 43 - Acceptance

John Lennon sagely sang: "life is what happens when you're busy making other plans".    That's sure been my experience over the 55 years of mine so far.  And often, that life involves situations we'd do anything to change.


After a series of major endeavors this fall --  running in an election, helping to mount a play and giving my annual virtues training, coupled with the painful and debilitating flare up of  fibromyalgia and a family members serious illness, I found myself in a state of exhaustion.   I literally  crashed for a couple of weeks.   This physical state made it impossible for me to muster the inner resources I needed to say my farewells to a woman I loved very much, before she died in early December.  I had been so out of touch the last few months of her life, I didn't even know how close her time to journey to the other side camp was.  When I heard she had taken that journey, I was heartbroken.

Not getting to say goodbye to this beautiful soul that I loved dearly, is a grief on top of the grief of losing her.  Yet I've had to find a way to come to acceptance -- that is the way things unfolded and there's nothing I can do to change it.  I don't get a do over.


Having an energy illness for the last 15 years (fibromyalgia) has meant many times facing the chasm between what I wanted to do and what I could do.    Losing my dear, dearly loved friend without looking one more time into her eyes, without being able to tell her one more time what she meant to me was one of those times.  I'm sure there will be many more times -- for me and for you.  Circumstances don't always match up in this life.  

I come to acceptance slowly,  often  reluctantly and sometimes almost literally, on my knees.

I used to look mainly  at acceptance as accepting the 'suchness' of others.  Accepting myself with all my flaws and inconsistencies, in my humanness.  After many years of conscious effort, acceptance of this kind has become easier.

 To accept situations, the unfolding of my life when it is  radically different from my hopes, dreams and plans is something I've always had trouble with.  

Linda Kavelin Popov writes about acceptance: "We are open to what is, rather than wishing for something different.  We face the truth in all circumstances with honesty and courage."

At first thought, we might think it's a no brainer, to accept what is. 

Accepting the reality of these situations is not difficult intellectually.  However, the meaning of the practice of the virtue of acceptance is not a mere passive lack of outward, behavioral attempts to change what is happening, or has happened, but rather a less tangible feeling or harmony with truly accepting (on a deep emotional level, so we are no longer railing against the truth) what I want to be different.   Even if I take no action against a situation, or there is no action I could take to change a particular situation, I could still be in a state of non acceptance.  And that is what causes suffering.

"Acceptance is embracing life on its own terms." LKP  The good and the bad.  

The good news is that through this process of coming to terms with Tootsie's death, of coming to acceptance, I have  once again learned to embrace life on its own terms in an ever deeper and more profound way.  The bad news, is it wasn't easy and it often didn't feel very good and it didn't come without considerable railing, whining and gnashing of teeth!  Getting to acceptance of so many  things we'd rather weren't true, is very much a process.

The serenity prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr helps me to discern what I can change and what I have to accept.  "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." 

 And  I have to begin the long process of changing what I can....something that for each of us is ongoing.  One of the 'teachable moments' for me was realizing that I was going to grieve no matter what I was doing and that indeed, once I stopped being imobilized by the feelings and took them with me, on a walk by the ocean, pottering in the garden, throwing a pot on the wheel in my studio,  clearing and cleaning and letting go of that which no longer served me in my environment, into the meetings I'm charged with attending, I was doing the emotional work of letting go, while doing something positive to make myself feel more in control of what I could control.

To process a loss involves grieving it, and letting go.  And that can't be done in a moment.  It's a process.  

 And like a newly transplanted plant, much of the initial growth occurs underground, not visible to the naked eye.  Watered by tears the roots of my character grow stronger, more resilient.  One day I awoke to realize, that I had come to new ground, I had  somehow, inexplicably, come to acceptance. 

And now, having come to acceptance of the loss of my friend and my inability to see her in her last few months, how has it changed me?

I feel a deeper well of joy inside me.  Though I still feel sad when I think of how much  I miss  her and what she is missing, somehow I take her with me.    She is a part of my life and who I am and nothing can ever change that.    I am a better person for having known her, loved and been loved by her,  and strangely,  even for having lost her....

And  for this, I am now and will ever be,  grateful.  

Questions for reflection:

What  in my life do I need to accept?

What are the teachable moments in this situation?

What virtues will help me to come to acceptance?

How can I  draw on the courage to change the things I can?

~ Namaste

Kate