Resistance, resignation, acceptance. Round and round I go, day after day.
I attempted to write this piece a few weeks ago when the idea first came to me, but I was still way too raw in the resistance phase and barely getting to the resignation stage of some of the challenges I’m facing right now. I’m thinking that by now I’m calm enough and have moved into acceptance on several of these topics far enough and frequently enough that it won’t be cataclysmic internally to try to write this piece—because I think it’s important.
And this may be perfectly obvious, as most of my thoughts are. Maybe it’s perfectly well understood on pages 413 to 417 of some psychology book. But this is what I’ve determined empirically in my life over the past few months, or past few years, maybe:
A challenge comes up, and if it’s not what I want, if it’s not what I think I deserve (whatever that means), or if I think it’s not the best path, or it doesn’t fit well with my identity or ego, I, like most people, resist. And as we all know, pain times resistance equals misery. So quite often, resistance is related to a painful point, and the longer you stay in resistance, the more misery you experience.
Eventually, after enough misery, I realize it’s time to resign myself to whatever it is in front of me that seems insurmountable. After I sit with that for a little while, I am able to transition into actually accepting it. Accepting it with open eyes, with an open heart, and if I’m really doing well, with gratitude. Sometimes I am even able to see how that challenge will provide valuable lessons I could not have learned otherwise. Sometimes it allows me to reflect on all that I have taken for granted. All that I thought to be permanent. All that I was wrong about.
A very specific topical example is the greatly increased amounts of smoke in the Cascade mountains over the past several summers. I have been fortunate to be able to structure my life such that I have a base camp in the mountains, ample free time, and good enough physical shape to literally hike every other day all summer long, weather permitting. But over the past five years or so the number of days when the air quality is too poor to hike due in general to wild fires has greatly increased. About half of August has been such that hiking (with mild asthma) is unhealthy, so I haven’t. But I have only recently been able to be comfortable enough with resigning myself to this apparent new normal to even contemplate accepting it. And to further complicate the matter I believe the real challenge is deeper than that for me.
This apparent end to the endless smoke free days of perfect summer weather in these perfect mountains triggers feelings of insecurity in me. My most deep vulnerable spot. I think I need to work through feeling safe in this new normal. I need to work through all kinds of confusing emotions that likely wouldn’t even make sense to most people. But they are real for me and I’ve noticed this same internal reaction in relation to many other things in my life. So…..maybe I can get to gratitude eventually. Gratitude for the valuable lesson of being more aware of when my “safety” alarm goes off.
I honestly don’t know. It was actually much harder to write this than I thought it would be. I am hoping that is because it is more important for me to learn and re-learn this lesson than I had estimated.
Resistance, resignation, acceptance. Actually it is more like Resistance, resignation, acceptance, resistance, resignation, resistance, resignation,resistance, resignation, acceptance…………resistance………..
