Belated Request: Some Thoughts About Acceptance

Michael put in a request on the topic of acceptance.  He asks a bunch of questions, like

Should acceptance be an ideal? Can one accept too much – are there reasonable limits to acceptance, or should we strive for complete and total acceptance? If there are limits, how might we define or delineate them in everyday life? How is acceptance related to unconditional love? Can there be limits to acceptance within the context of unconditional love? What about when acceptance gets you into "trouble?" Do you accept that too? Perhaps it is not really trouble after all. What about when a pattern of acceptance intersects with another's pattern, such as "taking advantage" or "passivity" or whatever? This seems like the edge case for acceptance.

Hmmm.  I haven't exactly been avoiding this request.  More like stalling while it kind of percolated around in me.  Because I don't know the answers to those questions.  They sound kind of intellectual to me.  When I think about writing about acceptance I find myself sliding over to another concept, that at first sounds really unrelated.  I told myself I couldn't write about the request until I could talk about acceptance, not the other concept.  That other concept is curiosity.  But eventually I had to give up.  I don't know very much about acceptance, and the only way I can really get to it is through curiosity.  And some kind of naiive love, I guess.  I'm confused by this, but I think they must be connected.  Are curiosity and acceptance the same thing?  Seems strange, but I'm ready to say maybe.

All those good hard questions Michael asks stump my brain, but they really kind of fade away for me in real life if I focus on curiosity. I'm just so darn interested in how the world really is.  I want to know everything.  I want to know how people make decisions -- awful decisions as well as good ones.  I want to know how it feels to be you, how it really, truly feels.  I know my imagination has huge limitations so I have to keep gathering information all the time.  I want to know what happens next.  So even when I feel awful or when you've hurt me or when I'm attached to an outcome and I can feel it slipping away, there is certainly the grasping whining desperate part of me that would benefit a lot from a dose of acceptance.  Let's be clear.  I want things to work a certain way; I have scripts in my head and am constantly frustrated by the failure of the other people in my life to stick to the script and say and do what I want them to say and do the way I think it should go.  No, you bozo, this is the part where we're supposed to live happily ever after! 

But there is always a part of me asking, "I wonder what happens after this.  I wonder how long I can feel this awful.  I wonder why I didn't see this coming.  I wonder what I'm missing here.  I wonder if this is how other people feel."  And that part of me, the part that is enthralled by watching the world unfold, that is gathering information and absorbing everything, that's the most whole part I think.  That part saves me.  It wants to know the truth, whatever it might be.  What's next?  And what's after that?  It doesn't cling to anything.  That's the only real way I understand acceptance. 

And I guess there are some basic other pieces that make that curiosity possible for me.  I trust the world.  I find it beautiful.  Whatever I see, I know there's more and I trust that learning more will be better.  If I didn't feel this way I think curiosity wouldn't take me so far.  I'm never disappointed by finding out the truth.  I am disillusioned plenty, but that's different.  I'd always always rather know how the world actually is than believe it to be the way I want it to be.  Because I think even though things are complicated and even though people are flawed, most folks are trying their best and there's something beautiful in the effort, even in the failure.  I guess this is an innocence or an earnestness that I have that I should be a little bit embarrassed about.  It's not exactly fashionable to have this worldview.  But I love being alive.  I love people.  I love places.  I want to see what happens next.  It's always more interesting than my stupid script.

Comments

[bridgeovertroubledwater]

Reading through your searching discourse on "acceptance" I was like a bit like a panting dog happily following a circuitous yet connected 'scent'.

About the time that I had followed you through to individual curiosity and individual pain, the over bearing urge to shout individual TRUTH! pranced in my brain. And then in about your next sentence, there it is, borning in you as it was birthing in me. Such synchronicity implies to me a type of cosmic truth that exists beyond ourselves.

How right and good it feels to explore and be curious about one another's lives. Once again Sherry, you have lead us down such a path...such a privileged walk.

[Michael J.]

Wow – radical! Acceptance and curiosity! Thanks!

I will integrate your thoughts with those of everyone else I've been talking with, and cook up a stone soup post at Notio. I will link here when that happens. Could be several days.

[a]

I am not sure I agree with you, or wholly follow.

What about acceptance without all the curiosity? When should you take things as they are, and not pry deeper? What implications does that have? This might connect to the unconditional love, or other emotions that might not ever be able to be explained to finite conclusion, but simply have to be trusted.

What about when people are unwilling to explain, and answer to your curiosity? When you cannot get to the truth of the matter. How do you react when people do not want to explain, and won't answer to why they don't want to explain either? How, in that situation, can one comfortably accept that, given such curiosity?

Or is that when your basic trust in the world comes into play; to satiate your immediate curiosity with the belief that whatever that truth is, it will be something beautiful and interesting, even if you should never know it.

[PG]

Amen.