Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Acceptance: 360th Idea






















Acceptance is one of the things which definitely makes for greater life happyness. Most people want more, most of the time.

If we are midaged, we want more time; if athletic, more opportunity to train harder without injury; if overworked, more liberty from unrelenting job demands; if sluggish, more energy, if too stimulated, a better capacity to unplug and unwind; if poor, more money; if rich, better returns; if abundant, perhaps more security in an uncertain world thirsting to take the better portion of what we have.

In his classic tale, Geothe describes this so well: Mephestopheles offers Faust life eternal if only once he should say that he is satisfied, when the latter bargains his life away for eternity for one moments fulfillment.

Life is always changing. Things previously solutions to other perdicements no longer work quite the same. This can lead to perenial dissatisfaction. Understanding is very similar to acceptance: whereas understanding is much broader, such as involving the nuances of negotiating the legal minutae of a long and complicated contract between two seperate interests or the reconciliation between two marital partners in the inevitable differences of sharing intimacy or child reering, or resolving spending patterns, yet acceptance is more of a spiritual matter.

In time we come to see that more money, more study, more time, more travel, even more freedom cannot answer all that our heart wants. In time we come to see perhaps that we will not be young again or write the great American novel or make our first million by forty and must, *well*, come to terms with the fact that 'the life that we have, is the life that we will have'. Not particularly good or bad, but what is so. This acceptance cannot bring us more power or wealth but puts us more into harmoney with both the universe, those around us, and even our very own selves.

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