Acceptance

People keep asking whether I’m over her. No, I’m not over her. I don’t feel I need to treat her like an obstacle in my path. For me, the chore is in learning to accept her decision. Isn’t that the whole point of loving someone, anyway? You accept their decisions no matter what. You don’t have to agree with them. You don’t have to understand them. You accept them because you love them and people you love can do no wrong.

My dad’s favorite place to eat is probably Taco Bell. Taco Bell is disgusting. It is synthetically processed, nutritionally void and flavorless crap, made up in the morning then left under a heat lamp until served to you by underpaid morons wearing demeaning purple uniforms in a depressingly uncomfortable fluorescent-lit cafeteria bursting with over-sized advertisements. On top of all that, my dad lives in Fresno, California, where he wouldn’t have to travel very far to pay less for authentic Mexican food. I live down the street from a Taco Bell, and deride anybody there nearly every time I pass by. I’m not going to get over my disdain for that place, but I love my dad, so I simply accept that he eats at Taco Bell; which isn’t hard because seriously, who cares?

There are people reading this suddenly ashamed that they like Taco Bell. This demonstrates that it is actually easier to accept the opinions and actions of others than it is to accept oneself. Everybody grows up being told how they’re supposed to be, and are afraid that they won’t be loved unless they are how they’re supposed to be. In the end, they grow up hating themselves for not being who somebody else told them they’re supposed to be. Most try to live in denial; others rebel by trying to become who they’re not supposed to be. Very few ever simply learn to exist.

Unfortunately, the most common reason for not accepting someone is because they don’t believe the same as you, which is profoundly arrogant and excruciatingly shallow. Anyone who unequivocally insists that they’re right is actually highlighting their own insecurities. Most people are bothered by the fact that they are essentially alone in this world and spend their lives hoping others will validate their existence by loving, admiring or agreeing with them. People crave external validation when they can’t accept themselves. Perhaps the most frustrating time to accept others is when they make choices fueled largely by guilt, which is lack of self-acceptance.

Instead of accepting themselves, people instead try to define themselves, and then they desperately or futilely try to live up to that limiting definition. There is little left of life once you decide how it’s supposed to be. Inflexibility inevitably leads to failure, unless you have very narrow expectations. Most want things to be a certain way or insist that they know how things are. Strange then that I’ve yet to find anybody who knows what the hell they are talking about, myself included.