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Garret Kramer

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Acceptance  September 21 2011

Many counselors, teachers, or coaches believe that acceptance is the key to moving past a painful situation. In an athletic sense, you often hear that you have to first accept a defeat to be able to grow from it. When a loved one passes away, priests or rabbis often preach about accepting our loss. To be honest, however, to me acceptance never quite worked that way. Is Bill Buckner truly capable of accepting such a crucial error in the 1986 World Series? I’m not sure. Can Scott Norwood accept missing a field goal that would have won the Super Bowl XXV? I doubt it. Three years ago, my wife lost her best friend to cancer. Is she really capable of accepting this tragic situation? I just don’t think so. In fact, I believe the more Buckner, Norwood, or my wife try to accept these circumstances, the less tolerant of them they will actually become.

Forcing ourselves to accept external predicaments only intensifies unrest.

Yes, I am aware that this perspective goes against the grain. Even Moses said that the key to overcoming the death of a family member lies in acceptance. But while it might sound productive, forcing acceptance usually revs up thought and confusion as we wonder why in the world we can’t live up to this divine recommendation. Think of it this way, when your high school sweetheart broke your heart and your parents said, “We know it isn’t easy, but the best thing to do is accept it and move on,” you knew that this was an extremely tall (if not impossible) order.

There is, thankfully, a key to moving past our troubles and prospering, although acceptance has nothing to do with it. Again, if a baseball player strikes out in a big moment—why in the world would he accept it? To the contrary, we need to understand that losses and missed opportunities are never the source of our wayward moods. By forcing ourselves to accept undesirable circumstances, we are placing credit where it doesn’t belong—ultimately playing victim to the events of the outside world. In other words, since a strike-out is not the source of a baseball player’s low mind-set, accepting it can’t possibly make him feel better.

Although not true, our circumstances often look like they are the source of our discontent—trying to accept them magnifies this illusion.

To be clear, I certainly understand that when pain arises, it does look like the world around us is the reason why. But this just isn’t so. Sure, my wife is extremely sad about losing her friend, but there is a big difference between sadness—a genuine and productive sentiment born from compassion or love; and misery—a destructive emotion born from a temporarily low state of mind.

The bottom line is that human beings are not capable of accepting, understanding, or moving past anything when their consciousness is faltering. That’s why, in order to move through your troubles, you are far better off looking inward toward to your mind-set in the moment and being guided accordingly. If you’re glum and disquiet—be still; do not try to talk yourself into accepting any external event. If you’re melancholy but clear—do whatever feels right to you. Acceptance is indeed a peaceful word, but a closer look reveals that making peace with external predicaments is, in the end, a limiting and self-defeating prophecy.