Acceptance

I played junior varsity basketball for my high school team when I was in the 10th grade. Our coach took a bunch of mediocre players all the way to the state finals. We lost. But I learned the importance of basics and fundamentals.

I learned that if you simply box out your opponent, even at 5’ 8” you can most often get the rebound. I learned that if you cut off the baseline and force your opponent into the center of the court, you can get help from your teammates. Hold your palm up, not down, on a layup and you add 5 inches to your release.

Coach wouldn’t let us dribble behind our back or showboat in any way. Stick to the fundamentals and you will be fine he kept telling us.

I since learned that sound fundamentals won’t always win you the championship, but they will take you pretty far.

Two life fundamentals I’m working on are acceptance and gratitude. These two help fear, anger, loneliness, sadness and just about anything else life throws at me.
Acceptance for me is letting go; not resisting; seeing what is, rather than what I think it is. I really like it because it brings an immediate response of serenity. When I let go, I don’t have to do anything except watch and wait to see what happens next. It is ironic because I feel empowered by letting go. I think serenity is my favorite emotion these days.

I was watching a special on the Wall Street journalist, Daniel Pearl who was murdered in Iraq. At the end of the program, they interviewed his wife and they asked her if she was angry over her husband’s murder. And she said something like, One can’t be happy until one stops resisting. I think a big part of acceptance is to stop resisting.

One of the hardest things for me to accept is when someone turns out to be not who I thought them to be. I’m not talking about the sort of image we project onto people through our own filter. Rather, I’m referring to the huge sense of betrayal and loss of faith and trust when someone deceives you and lies to you. There is that immediate surging denial response that says, “NO, that can’t be. This person would not treat me like that. This person loves me.” Anger raises its ugly head next.

Anger can be so much fun. You can be all self righteous and imagine all these great scenarios where you tell the other person off. Seriously, though anger is such a waste of time. Each minute you spend angry is one minute of happiness or serenity that you have forfeited. Sadness and bargaining follow but then ultimately you come to accept the other person for who they truly are.

For me, acceptance is not a resignation. It is almost void of emotion. There is more of a quiet serenity. Kind of that is the way it is, and so be it. I get comfortable with the understanding.
One needs to be careful not to avoid accepting and adapting. If I am being abused by being lied to and deceived, I can’t accept that. If as happened to me recently, the person can’t or won’t stop lying, I need to accept that and move on.

I should note that acceptance can come and go. I can be serene about being mistreated one day and be angry the next.
The good news though is I can practice acceptance; practice letting go; practice not resisting, practice having no demands and the times of serenity become longer and occur more often; The periods of anger, denial and sadness get shorter and less frequent.

Maybe that is enough for today. I’ll talk about gratitude in another blog.

Thanks for reading .