‘Just accept it’, we hear.

And it makes sense.

Because it is what it is, right?

We’ve tried the fighting and the resisting and the blaming, but it only got worse.

And now we’re tired.

Fed up.

Done.

The thing that seemed so important, so personal, so deeply unfair, suddenly and somehow becomes transparent, less heavy.

Acceptance has happened.

But how?

Accepting doesn’t seem to be a thing we literally and purposefully do, like taking out the trash, snapping our fingers, or singing under the shower.

It doesn’t seem to be an activity, something that is up to you.

‘Today I’m going to accept this.’

So what IS it?

To me, acceptance looks like a moment where a belief, an idea, some thought that really meant something and had a lot of significance in our life, loses its importance.

It’s like a shift where you realize that it doesn’t serve you anymore to keep chewing on it, and at that moment it drops.

It’s a graceful, sobering change in perspective, or like a space shuttle losing a fuel tank that has become obsolete.

The reason why I’m sure it must be something like that is that I’ve spent hours and hours and hours trying to deliberately accept stuff, and it simply didn’t happen.

I tried to accept romantic break-ups, but the pain just got worse.

I tried to accept the excess fat around my waist, but that made me incredibly nervous (diet and workouts did the trick).

I tried to accept that I can’t force life to do what I want, but still hope it does.

I tried to accept SO MANY different things that made me crazy, but it hardly ever turned out to be a very powerful undertaking.

Accepting stuff not only seems to entail some sort of spontaneous shift, but it’s also part of a process.

Just like forgetting things is a process.

You can’t forget by saying you want to.

We simply don’t control the Thought Creation Machine like that, so whatever it is you forget for a while, there’s always a chance it will pop up again.

Acceptance is a bit like that.

A process AND a point where stuff simply shifts.

And there’s something else about it, something that feels just a little bit less random and out of our control.

Recently it seems to me that instead of deliberately letting go, accepting is more about not holding on.

Like a bunch of bright helium balloons traveling up the sky after you forgot to hold them tight.

Something like that.

I don’t know.

Maybe this all sounds contradictory.

Maybe life just IS incredibly contradictory.

But one day, I’ll totally accept that.

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(Photo by @denisseleon, for Unsplash)