The Art of Acceptance

Acceptance is the highest form of respect, in my opinion. There is respect, understanding, and then acceptance.

You can respect someone’s way of life without understanding them. You can understand someone’s way of life without accepting them. And though you could accept someone’s way of life without understanding them, which is still a lovely thing to do regardless, there is value in both understanding someone and accepting them. It is not simply blind acceptance, but also a real understanding of their person and still choosing to take them in your heart either way.

This concept of respect, understanding, and acceptance is applicable in one’s own life, regarding one’s own emotions, as well. 

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I have recently learned that the worst thing that one can do is to avoid emotion, to try to swallow it and paint their heart a different color. 

If you are sad, though you can try to do it, you cannot just expect to go out and do crazy things to pretend that you’re not sad, and that life is flawless and beautiful and happy, and expect it to solve your problems.

If your heart is blue at a moment, you cannot try to paint it red, in hopes that it will make you spontaneous and fun and not blue anymore.

That is a mere failure to respect your blue heart, to acknowledge that your blue heart is there. You’ve already failed the most basic tier of respect, in a simple act of attempting to ignore it, and choosing to pretend that it is just not there.

You have to take your blue heart and look at it, and tell yourself that it’s alright that it’s a funky color right now. This is where you respect your emotions and its significance to you.

Then understand it, and ask yourself what exactly is making you sad. And, though I am guilty of this as well, you can’t just be glossy-glossy-surface level with this. 

For (granted, a very narrow) example, if you’re heartbroken, and a boy is making you sad, and you’re embarrassed by the fact that you’re letting a BOY make you feel this way, and you’re choosing to not admit that you’re letting him have that sort of emotional effect on you (trust me, this is me 99% of the time), then you are doing yourself a disservice! 

No! You tell yourself that you do feel sad and heartbroken about him. You tell yourself that your feelings are not stupid! And even if it does seem trivial and dumb, then that makes the next step easier. Just come to terms with what is making you feel this way; know the real root of the problem.

Then tell yourself that it is okay to be feeling like this. It’s okay to be sad at this moment, to have a little blue heart at this moment. Don’t discount your emotional hardship because you feel like it isn’t worthy of the trouble. Everything, even the most trivial of problems, is worth a little bit trouble if it means that much to you. 

Then once you have come to acknowledge, understand, and accept how you feel, then you can let your blue heart warm up, going through the steps: from blue, to purple, and then to red. 

There will be nothing fabricated or untrue; no paint bucket splashed haphazardly with aims to make a full 180 in your emotional state. 

Abrupt changes in how you feel, at least as is applicable in my life, leads to confusion: you’re happy, yet sad, yet you’re having a good time, yet something is really bothering you and you don’t know how to cope. The healthiest thing you can do is to respect who you are and to respect the true value of your emotions and to take time to understand what is going on in your head and to accept that you are not okay in that moment. 

Then, once that happens, steps to have a red heart once again can be made, without the confusion of an underlying blue in its hue.