Lately I have been accepting things, people, life as they are. It isn’t easy because I want to change them up, make them into something else entirely. But that hasn’t really worked all that well for me over the past fifty or so odd years.
So I made a decision to stop trying to force things, situations, people, and really putting MY WAY on ice for a little while to see what would happen. My job just to accept whatever is occurring, or in my case, what is usually not occurring. I get bored easily and am not the most patient person in the world...usually my impatience wins out over life’s ability and momentum to make shit happen. I get all upset about the lagging timetable and so I just make it happen myself.
It hasn’t been easy. I have had to bite my tongue a great deal. Sit on my hands and refrain...oh so very much refraining! Lots and lots of fucking refraining.
And I am getting better at it. Just allowing whatever is coming to pass, to just pass on through. And the first gift I have received in this endeavor is to see how much my previous ways were so mistaken. I can see that I have been thinking that I can move the weather. I can make the storm pass more quickly, or prevent it from coming at all. I know this seems ridiculous, but I have THAT kind of mind. One where the limits, are well, non-existent.
The next way this whole acceptance thing is turning out to be quite delightful instead of excruciating is that things are happening that never would have or could have happened because there was no gap between events or people or life. I insisted and then brought into being this immediate gratification life that was just filled with consumption, people, books, things, clothes, events...you name it, I devoured it. Now because I am just allowing people, situations and life to do what they do, I am finding myself winding up in places I never thought possible...which is kind of cool.
But the biggest and most rewarding payoff is the peace that I feel. It is so nice to not feel like I am in charge of making it all happen. It is like being weary from long car travel and having a bright, alert, trustworthy soul take over. You can slump in the backseat and take a nap, read a book, relax, stare out the window. A whole host of things that were not possible while driving.
I am enjoying the passenger seats, all of them. Free to move about the cabin of my life because I am not in charge. I never knew that just accepting things as they are without adding anything could be so rewarding and peace providing. I feel so much less stressed even when something I don’t like is happening and that old rush to “right” it comes flooding back. I am learning, ever so slowly, that we are all meant to be happy. To be joyous and be free...just not every second of every day perhaps. But when trouble does come or the thing that I do not like, or wish was different, sometimes the hardest, but most rewarding thing to do, is nothing...well, except accept it as being exactly as it is, adding nothing.
"And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation—some fact of my life —unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my alcoholism, I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my…