What's Acceptable?

Acceptance. A double-edged sword of a word. More than that even - a multifaceted and complex concept..

Acceptance can often mean coming to a place where we realise that we cannot change something, and subsequently letting go of our want or need to change it. Sometimes that leads to positive change in itself, in that the very act of letting go of our need to change something stops us expending valuable time and energy with little or no hope of actually affecting real change.

Conversely, sometimes acceptance is allowing something or someone to continue to wrong us, upset us or otherwise negatively affect our lives. We can find ourselves deciding to accept the status quo of any given situation, despite the fact that in doing so we are allowing it to continue to be detrimental to us. And we can make the choice to accept the way people treat us because 'that's just who they are', even though that allows their behaviour to continue to negatively affect us.

Acceptance is intrinsically tied to tolerance. In life we have to continuously engage in a process of choosing what we will tolerate and what we will not, and we have to make judgement calls all the time as to whether to be tolerant or intolerant of situations, attitudes and behaviours. This is often a fairly difficult process, and usually involves quite a bit of time, effort and careful consideration. Indeed, many of the biggest issues we face in our daily lives and the world at large are big issues simply because one person, or a whole group of people, are not doing the essential work of careful consideration, before acting or behaving the way they do in any given situation, or espousing their views regarding any particular issue in life.

So we must choose carefully what we tolerate in others, in order to reduce their ability to negatively affect us, but we must also always be mindful of becoming intolerant to other people simply because their views or the way they live their lives is distasteful to us. It is fine to disagree with others on how they think and what they believe, but we do just have to accept people's different views and lifestyles, as long as they aren't pushing their way of thinking and acting on other people, or encouraging their own kind of intolerance and hatred.

What we do not have to accept is anybody who upsets us with their behaviour simply because they refuse to acknowledge that how they are treating us is wrong. Nor should we accept anyone who is aware that their behaviour towards us is upsetting but expects us to just 'put up with it'. And, whilst we have to accept that sometimes people are genuinely unaware of how their behaviour is negatively affecting us, they have to accept that when they are called out on their negative words or actions they must address the issue with all due care and consideration.

We are all capable of being inconsiderate, ignorant, selfish and downright negative towards others. Such is the nature of the human condition. But we are also capable of reaching inside ourselves and carefully considering how we think and act, in order to foster tolerance, understanding, respect and compassion towards other people, and to ensure we treat people fairly. At the end of the day, interpersonal relationships are always a two-way street. It is not acceptable for one person to just stop in the middle of that street and hold up all the traffic, any more than it is okay to respond to someone's poor driving by getting road rage and ending up driving poorly ourselves.

There are, sadly all too often, situations in life where we have accepted the poor behaviour and actions of others for so long that negativity has become entrenched. The longer this has been the case for, the harder it can be to acknowledge just how bad things are in the first place, let alone challenge the people responsible and go about changing things for the better. Of course, the same is equally true of ourselves. If we harbour negativity towards others we absolutely have to accept responsibility for this and how it affects the people around us.

After all, awareness truly is everything.



Copyright ©2018 Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.