Acceptance. The thing that we’re all desperate for. We demand it, beg for it, require it of those sharing a life with us. We attack others for their lack of it. We say ‘if only there were more of it to go around’ while we stingily hoard it all for ourselves. We declare our state of acceptance is contingent on theirs. ‘I would accept them, if they accepted me first.’ Me first.
We label ourselves wounded, or broken because we have not been embraced enough for who we are. That is not an isolated wound, but a collective wound. That is to say, it's not unique to me, but something universal. We all struggle with acceptance. We all want our ideas, our hopes, our dreams, our skills, talents and interests to be validated. We want our personality to be understood, our joy, our grief, and everything in between. We want it to be ok. As social beings we feel it is our right to be accepted, and that may be, but where is all the acceptance going to come from when everyone is waiting for someone else to give it first? Acceptance is a system too often locked in inertia, due to our refusal to see outside of ourselves and our pain.
Acceptance is vulnerable. It’s scary because it threatens our sense of belonging—i.e. If I accept you then I am at risk of not being accepted by them, because they might not accept you. But what would our world look like if instead of basing our acceptance off of how well we are accepted, we chose to accept things and people because that is the most compassionate way.
I feel that right now, as a global, generalized society we are headed the wrong way on the tracks of acceptance. We are locked up in our own feelings of scarcity. Feeling that we are not offered enough acceptance we then refuse to offer it to the one’s who are different from us. Thus creating more scarcity. This rarifies acceptance until it’s a far-off dream attainable only by the highly accomplished and easily digested projections of self. In this paradigm acceptance is only for those who are perfect, or at least good enough at the illusion of it— acceptance is an elite drug.
This way we can see ourselves as generous and gregarious, tell ourselves that we did our part, but someone else fell short—a cheap and easily replicated philosophy. It doesn’t hold weight, it lacks integrity; I believe it would crumble under the weight of a feather. It perpetuates a narrative that there isn’t enough acceptance to go around, that acceptance is costly, that it’s an honor reserved for those who are worthy. This line of thinking teaches us that it is your own fault if you are not accepted, we played no part, not even in the refusal to accept you. It was out of our control, we couldn’t accept you, you were unacceptable. Besides, you probably wouldn’t accept us anyway, and why should I accept you if you don’t accept me first? The reasoning backing up and then re-circling the drain it was burped from.
It would be a different world if we were equipped with a theory of self. If we knew ourselves better, if we understood and loved our own universe then maybe it wouldn’t be so difficult to conceive of another’s. Our egos are hurt from the lack that we feel, from the isolation we experience when we embody ourselves, and others don’t understand. Our egos only know how to act out of our pain, not our experience. Our egos are strengthened by the things we identify with and as, and that is why a lack of acceptance feels like a direct attack of self. Only, it’s often not that at all.
If you want to be accepted you must first learn how to accept yourself, how to love your strangeness, then you must learn to love others for theirs. As much as it may feel contradictory and confusing, you are not what you do, you are not the things you like, and you are not what others see you as. You are a combination of mind, soul, and body. You are a multidimensional being. You are a self, separate of all the other selves, unique, but still a connected to something bigger. You are a spiritual being seeking community, and community is the embodiment of acceptance. It’s in our genetics to seek out connection with others.
This is why suburbia is crumbling before we ever saw it’s potential, because white suburbia is not community, it’s control. Community creates space for everyone, for every way of being [except the harmful ones—pedophilia, murder, and assault, but even these are trauma born out of trauma]. Community is acceptance. Your soul knows this is truth. Community does not require perfection, but it does require humility, vulnerability, and adaptability. When you lose those things you lose connection, you lose acceptance. You don’t need to understand people perfectly, you don’t even need to agree with them. In fact the work is done when you accept and even celebrate that which you don’t understand, nor agree with. Battling with uncertainty is a powerful, time-honored way to get to know yourself deeply.
If we could all understand that the people we struggle with the most are the ones who mirror some aspect of ourselves back to us, whether it be a shadow or a wounding. If this action or this person is triggering to us the problem doesn’t lie solely with the other, it lies also, and always with the self. You are allowed to protect yourself when and if this feels threatening, but protection doesn’t require attack. Sometimes the best offense is a good defense, right? Protection can be a defense, and I hate to say it, but it can be abstinence too. Meaning, if you are feeling attacked, you have options, and accepting a person for who they are while also removing yourself from them is always one of them.
What a world we could live in, if we understood personal responsibility. It all depends on your lens. If you feel a lack in yourself and you attribute it to someone else, you are not doing the work. Even if they played the part you say they did, that’s their work. Your work is understanding what that trigger brought up in you, and what you are struggling to accept about yourself. Perfection was never on the list of requirements for acceptance. In fact, requiring perfection is the polar opposite of acceptance. It’s saying, ‘I will will love you when,’ not, ‘i love you now, as you are, because you are.’