Understanding why someone did a certain thing or why we feel a certain way, doesn’t necessarily imply that we accept it. While accepting something can happen naturally and effortlessly, sometimes it requires an active choice on our part. The fact that we can make that choice empowers us to take the reins of our lives and not let our inner experiences be driven so much by hazard and chance.
We cannot control the people, events and world around us as much as we would like to think. The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry after all, because there are always too many variables to take into consideration and plan around. However, what we do have control over is how we react to the things happening outside and inside of us. Practising this kind of control over one’s own mind eventually leads to mastery over it. Once we’ve achieved it, nothing can touch us, we are finally liberated from the constantly swirling storm of feelings, emotions, thoughts and mental reactions, free in the true sense of the word and finally able to enjoy anything that happens to us, because it is all life, it is all a lesson, no matter how painful or pleasant. Life is a pendulum swinging between polar opposites. Between what people consider “good” and “bad”. Most people are on the ball at the bottom of the pendulum, constantly getting emotionally and mentally knocked around. Some of us try to climb up on the pendulum and the higher up we go, the less violent the swing. Once we make it to the fulcrum, the swing doesn’t affect us anymore, even though it’s still there, under us. We can sit in unaffected serenity and watch the dance of life unfold.
However, like any other kind of mastery, this takes practice. The more you practise the faster you become better at it. Think of it like picking up any new skill. And I’d like to put forth the question for you to ponder: what skill could you acquire that is more important than being happy?
Eventually, you arrive at a place of acceptance or tolerance which can take on anything with a calm and even serene mind. However, this state will constantly be tested, several times a day even, by the vicissitudes of existence and it will need to be reinforced constantly by the decision to accept whatever it is that gnaws at us. Like slipping back down the pendulum and deciding to climb back up. The fact that it is a decision, an act rather than a passive mode of existence needs to be as clear as the mirror of an unperturbed lake. Having felt everything in its entirety and having understood it thoroughly enables us to make that decision with relative ease.
So, what should we accept? First of all, the past. Things that have happened are set in stone and no amount of wishful thinking will change that. However much we regret having done or experienced something, we cannot change it. Therefore the only logical alternative is to accept it, all the while realising the value it has for us, because it gives us the chance to come closer to freedom and happiness. Sometimes we find it hard to accept something, because we constantly look for even the slightest benefit. So we launch into meaningless and exhaustive conjectures of “what ifs”, which drain our energy and ultimately lead us back to where we started. But that benefit can be the lesson that we derive from whatever we went through, and it makes us better for having learned something… anything. Only by accepting the past can we fully enjoy the present.
Another thing that we should accept is how we reacted and felt towards it. It’s often hard to admit to ourselves that we’re not perfect, that sometimes we do things which are incongruent with the image we have of ourselves. But only when we acknowledge that that image is not accurate, can we truly begin to shape ourselves in the way that we envision ourselves. There should be no shame or guilt here, it is what it is, and it was what it was, but the great opportunity upon realising this is that it doesn’t have to be that way from here on out. If we deny our faults, or brush them off, we empower them to keep controlling us. If we accept them, we can start to transform them for the better.
Something else that will become apparent here is that regret is meaningless. First of all, regret is usually condemning our past self for something, but…that’s very unfair, isn’t it? Without the experience that our present self is currently regretting, we would’ve had no way to fully understand that it was wrong in the first place. When I say fully understand, I don’t merely mean on an intellectual level, but as core knowledge, integrated fully into our being. We can tell the child a million times that fire burns, but, until the child actually gets burned, it won’t have integrated the lesson, even if they know it to be so. It is because the child in the past has had the experience of getting burnt, that the present child knows not to put their hand into the fire. Therefore, judging the ignorant, past self through the eyes of the more mature and wise present self, is unfair in every way.
Secondly, if our past experiences, though bad, offer a lesson, then they have moulded our present self into something greater than our past self and that’s valuable in itself. Therefore, there is nothing to regret. Therefore, accept the things you cannot change and take control of those you can: your inner self.