“Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there’s got to be a way through it.” – Michael J. Fox
Acceptance doesn’t mean you must become a prisoner of your choice, it means you become free because of your choice. Acceptance is a sign of wisdom. Wisdom is knowing the difference between what you have the power to change and what you can’t.
It can easily be mistakenly confused as weakness. Staying stuck in a situation that you once got involved in and using that as a reason for not moving forward is a weakness too and that’s not what I am talking about here.
Living a fulfilled life means to gain awareness of three distinct stages in life.
The first stage is awareness and acceptance of the things that you can’t change, like people, weather conditions, seasons of the year, day and night, death, and the list goes on and on.
The second stage is having the courage to change the things that you can change. Courage for me is to have the ability to set goals, make sacrifices, expose yourself to be criticised for being different, to be eccentric and crazy, to identify the most important things in your life and focus your attention on them.
The third stage is to have the wisdom to know the difference between the first stage and the second stage.
For instance, being resigned to a situation that can and should be changed is not acceptance but complacency. On the other hand, trying to change something that is just a fact, like stopping the rain, is not courage but foolishness.
Therefore, you don’t want to use acceptance to deal with situations that really call for courage. You also don’t want to use courage to deal with situations that call for acceptance.
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