The Path of Acceptance
Learning to live with the uncontrollable and still flourish
Each month, we tackle a different theme on how to live what the ancient philosophers called the “good life”—a life in the pursuit of becoming the best version of oneself.
For the month of January, we’ve been focusing on the theme of FATE. You can find links to the series at the bottom of this article.
This Week at a Glance:
To finalize our month’s theme of FATE, we dive into the practice of acceptance, working with life when we no longer can control the outcome.
By the time you finish this meditation, you’ll learn:
🍭 How to lean into and embrace inevitabilities;
🍬 Practice acceptance while still living a fulfilled life;
🍫 Find peace and meaning within the uncontrollables.
Let’s dive in.
The first question any of us should be asking, according to the French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus, is whether or not life itself is worth living.1 From this simple yet profound question does everything else expound, since if life is worth living, then it is also worth living well.
A life worth living recognizes that much of it is outside of our control, that learning acceptance—to embrace the unalterable things—is fundamental to each of our experiences.
Most of us do not know how to accept hard truths—we deny their existence, push them from our mind, or decide to bury our head in the sand and ignore their presence.
But these are just temporary distractions from unchanging circumstances.
Avoiding hard truths does not alleviate their pain, it actually makes it worse because we have not given ourselves any practice in learning how to deal with them. We must, as Nietzsche exclaimed, reject the pain of fate and instead, learn to embrace it.
“That which is necessary does not offend me. Amor fati is the core of my nature.”2
This week, we investigate five tactics we can use daily to practice acceptance and apply it in our daily lives.
Take a Step Back and Observe Reality
Reality is at times a blunt object that will smack you upside the head when you least expect it. When moments like this hit, it’s natural to recoil by trying to deny or change the reality we’re now up against.
But by taking a step back, we can counter this knee-jerk reaction and remind ourselves that fighting the harsh realities of life is a fight we cannot win.
There’s a reason why for almost 90 years Alcoholics Anonymous has been using the same mantra to help those struggling:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
There are aspects of life we will not be able to change, when we remind ourselves of that, we open the door of acceptance. We may not walk through it immediately, but we give ourselves the ability to see the truth.
Let the Emotions In
Resistance to truth is the first emotion we’re usually hit with when encountering something we cannot change—we want to deny it.
But eventually resistance gives way to other emotions, and each situation is different: anger, sadness, grief, joy, elation.
Having an emotion arise within us tells us that there is something going on, the situation we’re in is making us feel a certain way and the body and mind are reacting based upon previous similar (or as similar as it knows) experiences.
Going through different emotions does not make one weak, it makes them human. Learning how to embrace these emotions, acknowledge them when they arise and allow them their time, can we eventually learn to harness them. And by doing so, allow ourselves to come to terms with facts and allow the body and mind to begin the acceptance process.
Turn Inward
In Stoic philosophy, there is a famous story of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, when he was studying under the Cynic philosopher Crates of Thebes.
Crates is attempting to break Zeno’s shyness while they walk around the square of Kerameikos, Zeno carrying a bowl of lentil soup.
Zeno, feeling embarrassed and foolish for walking around with the bowl of soup, attempts to hide it under his shawl. Crates, observing this, smashes the bowl, splashing soup all over Zeno, who, out of embarrassment, runs away, leaving Crates to exclaim, “Nothing terrible has happened to you!”3
We place judgments on everything in life, it is how we make decisions. But those judgements can also hinder us from seeing truth.
Zeno placed judgments about the soup long before it was all over him. After the spill, he was the same man, but had learned a valuable lesson about judgments. He could have accepted the lesson outright had Crates offered but it would not have meant the same. Sometimes we need to go through an experience with our preconceived judgments before we can learn how to properly accept the lesson they are trying to teach us.
Embrace the Situation
“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati,” writes Friedrich Nietzsche, “that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it… but love it.”4
It is a simple concept to grasp, a hard one to implement. To embrace one’s disasters, to open one’s arms wide to them with acceptance, this is the most daunting task.
And yet, history is littered with examples of people doing just that.
Why?
Because eventually, we all have to face a situation where we cannot change the outcome, where we need to go through the hardship of unchanging circumstance, and be left with the options to embrace the hardship or let it envelope us.
Easy to understand, hard to execute.
But this is what Marcus Aurelius meant when he reminded himself to turn obstacles into triumphs5.
The obstacles become the way because we learn to embrace them as the lever of forced growth that they are, not the impediment to our lives.
They are our lives.
Lean into the Absurd
When we realize that life is absurd, that is our beginning writes Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus. Camus believed the world was absurd, everyone running around looking for meaning in a world that was completely indifferent to those within it.
To articulate Camus’ stance of the absurd and how it in fact frees us from the chains of life, he reimagines the story of Sisyphus, the Greek king who was forced for eternity to repeat the process of pushing a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down.
When one is confronted with such bleak unchangeable circumstances, Camus suggests, we are reminded that it is within our power to still decide how we wish to handle the situation we’re presented with. For Sisyphus, it was the acceptance of his punishment, knowing full well that he would need to push the ball up hill only for it to once again roll right back down.
But within this absurdity is the answer. From moments like this, Sisyphus can find joy in the struggle because the struggle exists and is his existence.
“One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”6
Acceptance has the connotation that we lack power over a situation, and we often do, but if we dig beneath the surface of these situations, we will see we have power to choose—to choose how we will react, how we will shoulder the situation, how we will interpret it.
It is within our acceptance of the fate that we decide how we will derive meaning from the hardships of life.
3-Bullet Summary:
Aspects of life will be outside of our control, we have to learn and accept this in order to find peace within ourselves;
By leaning into reality rather than fleeing, and by embracing the emotions that arise when we encounter uncontrollable events, it opens the door for acceptance;
We provide the meaning to the situations we encounter.
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For the month of January, we’ve been focusing on the theme of FATE through our Monday Meditations (MM), Wednesday Wisdoms (WW), and Friday Sweet Bites (SB).
Here are the topics covered so far if you wish to catch up:
If this or any of my other work has resonated, please consider upgrading to a paid membership (it’s less than a cup of coffee per week, and sweeter).
Until next week,
D.A. DiGerolamo
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Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
Friedrich Nietzsche, In Emergency, Break Glass
Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus