Recently, I stumbled onto the YouTube clip of a conversation between US media personalities, Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper. They were talking about each of their experiences in grieving the loss of a parent.
Colbert’s loss came at the age of 10 when his dad and the two older brothers closest to him in age were killed in a plane crash. He talks in this interview about his process of coming to terms with that loss and its effect on his life as a child, and then how it continued to influence him as he matured. That’s when he said the words that made me pause the video and just sit with them.
“The bravest thing we can do is to accept the world as it is.”
I have been aware that acceptance of life as it comes to me is an important spiritual practice. I had not considered it to be an act of courage.
By acceptance, I don’t mean resignation, as in, “There’s nothing that can be done about this, so I just swallow my feelings and trudge on, coping as best I can.”
By acceptance, I also don’t mean shrugging off indignity and injustice as “that’s just the way things are.”
Acceptance is looking honestly at what I am experiencing, or at what is taking place in the world around me, acknowledging all my feelings about it, and then discerning what my next right action is.
My own extended family is coming to terms with the effects of major health event experienced by someone we love. There is a part of me that wants to push back against everything this experience represents. I tell myself someone as young as the person I love shouldn’t have such a devastating medical event. I tell myself the medical system should be better able to respond to such a crisis. I tell myself the effects would’t be so devastating had the hospital responded in more timely fashion, or the doctor shown more compassion.
There are many “shoulds” that have varying degrees of validity. The facts are that this experience has unfolded as it has, and it is now part of our lives. Fixating on what I feel “should” be different only keeps me stuck in resistance. This is where Colbert’s words invite me, and encourage me.
It is an act of courage to accept what is.
For me, acceptance is making the effort to look honestly at what has occurred. Someone I love has experienced a health event that has changed their life irrevocably. My life is changing and will continue to change as we respond to their needs as a family. The change is hard. There are losses that I need to acknowledge and grieve. I am feeling the precarity of the human experience like I never have before. I pay attention to the vulnerability I feel, and the grief, and the frustration of what I can’t control.
Tending to all of this is “the bravest thing I can do”. I can’t tend what I am unwilling to acknowledge as being my experience in this moment. True acceptance leads me to knowing what my next right action is, both in care of myself and in responding to the needs of others.
Sometimes when I allow myself to look honestly at life as it is, I recognize that changes are necessary. This is when acceptance and courage lead me outward into making my voice heard, and putting effort into working for a more just, more compassionate world.
Dr. Marian Budde puts it this way, “Accepting what we did not choose … is a courageous choice at a decisive moment to embrace the places we are broken as an integral part of a courageous life.”
The places where I feel wounded are the last places I expect to find courage. The space of my own vulnerability is not where I instinctively go to connect with my own bravery. Yet, when I look at the world around me, it is precisely in the heartbreaking, unjust and unfair circumstances that I witness others’ strength of heart.
The word courage comes from a Latin root that means “heart”. This is the essence of courage—meeting life with an open heart, not bracing myself against what is uncomfortable, not armouring myself against my own vulnerability. This kind of courage includes tears and anger, fear and overwhelm. It’s embracing myself as I am in this moment, and the next and the next. It’s being willing to reach out to others when I’m feeling lost, or overwhelmed, or in need of companionship.
This is the courage of acceptance.
Does acceptance feel like courage to you? What resistance do you feel when you consider acceptance as courage?
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