MY Counseling, Inc.    Mary weber-Young, Ph.D. 

    Licensed Professional Counselor

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The following is an excerpt from the June 2001 Newsletter:

This is a piece I find myself often revisiting.  This is probably because I hear it come up so often in sessions.

Many people seem to be confused about the concept  of acceptance.  I often hear them say, if I accept “this” as it is, “it” will never change, and I simply can’t live with the way things are.  Thus, they draw the conclusion that they can’t accept their current lot.  Maybe you’ve said, “if I accept my weight the way it is, I will never get thin.  And I don’t like my body now.”

I find it helpful to make the following distinction.  Acceptance says this is what it is AT THIS PARTICULAR MOMENT IN TIME.  It doesn’t require that you agree with the circumstance, that you like the circumstance, or that you hope it will always be this way.  It is merely acknowledgment of what is.  And this is the part people really struggle with:  acknowledge it without judgment of the condition being good or bad.  Rather, it is a relinquishment of the past and the present in favor of being where you currently are.  It is only from there that you can objectively determine the appropriate course of action.  Without your energy in the present, you are instead destined to cloud your choices by old habits and patterns and/or future fantasies.

In contrast, resignation is the inclusion of the judgment.  It says, okay, I’ll live with it the way it is, but I don’t like it.  Resignation is a victimization.

Acceptance is the recognition that where you are at this moment is all you can absolutely be sure exists.  It is an affirmation of the here and now which is the only thing you can impact with any real accuracy.  You might argue that if you change A, you can also impact the future of B.  I would agree that while that is likely in many cases, there is no guarantee that the future will occur at all, much less with the certainty that one might try to predict.

On a spiritual level, acceptance is an acknowledgment of what the universe has offered you at this particular moment.  Standing still in acceptance gives you the opportunity to see if there is anything you can learn, about you, about the world, about life.  Resignation doesn’t provide you with the openness to consider these messages.

 Butterfly

(author unkown)

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly.  One day a small opening appeared and he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole.  Then it seemed to stop making any progress.  It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could, and it could go no further.  So to help the butterfly, he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon.  The butterfly emerged easily.  But it had a swollen body and small shriveled wings.

The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body which would contract in time.

Neither happened.  In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings.  It was never able to fly.

What the man, in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives.  If the universe allowed us to go through our lives without any obstacles, it would cripple us.  We would not be as strong as what we could have been.  We could never fly.

I don’t know the author of this, but I think it’s a valuable piece of wisdom.  And I might add, that the same is true for our willingness to allow others to have their struggles without our needing to rescue them with our kindness.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Moliere

Alan Cohen

Marilyn Ferguson

Copyright © 2003 Mary Weber-Young Ph.D.
Modified 8-10-05