Maybe the key in life is to accept
Have you ever laid down and rethought everything that has happened in your life? Your what if’s and should’ve’s, the unexpected losses and gifts. How do we face these moments? When things go beyond our control, becoming more challenging than we expected it to be. The answer lies in one word; acceptance — the ultimate key to a fulfilling life.
I’ve often wondered, how do we live knowing everything that had happened? We learn to accept every single thing that we encounter. Yet, acceptance is a word that is easy to say, to advice, to memorize, but far harder to apply in life. It is a concept we might think of something we can bypass, but most of the time, we can’t. Losing someone? We often hear people say “We just move on and accept it” as if it’s a simple flick of a switch. We might’ve been the one offering this advice, but let’s be realistic and not expect the grieving person to act as if everything is suddenly fine, as if accepting is an easy process . It takes time for them to reach that point, and by then, they’ve often figured things out on their own terms.
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“How do we accept?” you might ask. Acceptance runs in powerful actions:
moving forward and not looking back, simply facing what’s in front of us.
Rather than dwelling on the past and lost, our focus must lead to what is now—not what was.
This shift in focus isn't passive, we learn to acknowledge truths even if it felt like thorns—uncomfortable and painful. It means courageously facing reality instead of feeding ourselves with delusions of denial. As well as learning to feel your own emotions, good or bad, without judgement. We let ourselves feel emotions, not denying, judging or suppressing any of them.
We need to learn to accept things on our own, it might not be easy but it shouldn't stop us from doing other things. By accepting, we get to free ourselves from the past and live in the present. Acknowledging and feeling—without resistance.
By doing so, we focus on what is and the possible chance we can take in our future.
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
- A Psalm of Life
