Acceptance Without Resignation

Friends!

Thank your incredible engagement during the last few weeks. I feel we have been going both high and deep. Love it. 

These topics are not easy. I feel that as I read and engage with wisdom, philosophy, and contemplative thinking, I end up with more questions than I have answers. But as the old story goes...."I'd rather stay down here with the questions than be up there with the answers."

Given the impossibility and vastness of some of the questions facing us, such as climate change, erosion of democracy, the divisiveness of our civil dialogue, it isn't strange that many of us feel a sense of helplessness around what to do. It's very understandable. I feel it every day. 

I had several conversations these last few weeks with people I deeply respect about what our responsibility truly should be given our choices. Responding meaningfully to these big questions is so hard and often paralyzing. It comes at such a price that many feel that the best way to deal with them is to ignore them and simply focus on ourselves. Others feel a strong sense of desire to get into the arena and engage in the combat of change, even if the likelihood of success is small and the price of admission is high. It’s almost as if you can see people aligned in a “fight or flight” mindset. So, what is the right answer?

Well, there is no right answer. Either way is the right way. Your path is the right path. 

But in those conversations, I got reintroduced to a notion that exists in most spiritual traditions, but perhaps is most prominent in Buddhism.
 

Acceptance
without
Resignation

This is worth pausing on. And it is not semantics or splitting hairs. There is a real significance of difference here. And I would go so far as to say that managing this well is a key to peace and happiness. The wisest and also seemingly happiest people I have met are happy, not in spite of, but because, the circumstance they find themselves in. They always find peace with what is and in that peace, they often also can express, with inspiring precision, what could be different. Even if it isn't yet so.

Accepting what happens to us is clearly difficult. I know I struggle with it a lot. I am too impatient and often too judgmental whenever things turn out different than I expected or wanted. At the same time trying to change other people, the weather, traffic, or negative events that have already happened is not a productive investment in our emotional energies. So what to do?

Well.....I do believe separating acceptance from resignation is a good idea. Working on just accepting whatever is thrown our way is healthy. It does not mean we also have to give up on our ideals, dreams, or hopes for a different future. On the contrary, I think by accepting reality we can be more calm, collected, and effective when figuring out how we can be of most service to the future we'd like to walk towards.

As many of us are about to enter a wonderful Thanksgiving tradition, I hope we can use gratitude as a way to help us accept whatever it is that we are worried about. And in that wonderful balsam of gratefulness, we can perhaps also recommit to not resign from our deepest desires for a better world. In that more peaceful place, we might discover a greater conviction, strength, and resolve that can help us together shape the world we'd all like to live in.

Instead of links this week I am sharing Adele's beautiful song "I drink wine" from her latest album released this week. I felt it was so on topic and her voice always helps me connect to what I like the most.

This is how the song starts:

How can one become so bounded by choices that somebody else makes?

Enjoy.

Have a most wonderful Thanksgiving!