In a previous article I mentioned that how we perceive life and the meanings that we place on things that occur in our lives is not necessarily reality. Two people can view the same scene and have completely different opinions about what took place.
Things don't always go the way we want them to go or turn out the way we expected. How we react to those outcomes is basically how we view the world. You have heard the saying " if you get a lemon, make lemonade". I do not think that all people view events that way.
We make our lives miserable when we refuse to accept how things are. Our family and our friends do not always do what we think are the right things and we can be hurt or alarmed by it. Many quarrels and disagreements result because people don't do what we want them to do. Wars are waged daily because people don't behave the way people want them to.
Folks can say the darnedest things, it seems, and having no idea what meaning we will give it. We jump to conclusions and react before clarifying it. There are times also when we must agree to disagree. That is a hard thing to do. We must be right. It's human nature to want to be right. We are right about so many things and are willing to sacrifice anything to be so.
Acceptance to me has no reaction. It is observation. As human beings, when we want things to be other than they are, we deny them and fight against them. We tell ourselves stories to contradict what is really happening and often we believe the stories ourselves. For instance, I have lost two relatives who denied that they had anything physically wrong with them when the evidence was clear to their loved ones. People carry pain inside them for years because they have not accepted events that occurred in their lives.
Acceptance is telling ourselves the truth about what is happening. It doesn't mean we have to like it. It is about facing events head on and taking control over how it affects us. We do have a choice. We may not have a choice about what happens, but we always have a choice in how we perceive it and the actions we take based on that. We can believe anything we want about events in our life. But it is just that our belief.
We need to find out what's really important to us. That way, we can be accountable for all that takes place and thus make decisions based on what works for us. When we are not accepting, we are victims of circumstance and therefore powerless. We cannot change other people. All that we can do is set an example for them. When that is done with integrity, people often follow suite.
