Acceptance

I’ve been working on myself lately and one of the issues that keeps coming up with me is this idea of acceptance. I’m learning that there is so much power in the act of simply accepting myself just the way I am. Why I want to talk about this issue is because I think it is important when interacting with other people, with relationships with other people and most importantly with our relationship with our self. It has taken me many years to understand concepts that are now being taught to children in elementary school, I mean basic social skills. When I was young, research wasn’t being done on bullying. When I was young people didn’t understand mental illness like they do today. Being bullied doesn’t build thick skins, in fact, often times it thins our skins out. I am happy to see that now there are resources available for people suffering from these things, though that doesn’t mean that the problem doesn’t persist and it doesn’t mean that we can now wipe our hands of these people.

Acceptance for me looks like being my own friend, taking a liking to who I am regardless of the flaws in my nature. It takes practice to approve of myself enough to not let others get to me and not too much to where I put people off or act as though I am better then someone. Acceptance of myself is gained through helping others and loving others just the way they are. In the process I develop compassion and understanding. I am able to grow and learn, seeing from another persons perspective.  I will never know what it is truly like to be a man, or what it is like to be Native and so on and so forth. Not in this life at least. I guess what I want to say is that I find myself in others and through human connection I learn to love myself and that’s all that I really need at the end of the day; love.

Let me know what you think!