Acceptance
One of the biggest lesson I witness in the everyday life is Acceptance.
In the last two weeks, I experienced a very angry and frustrated state of being since I wake up until I went to sleep.
After 3 months of almost daily gratitude, that came as a little surprise — the natural flow of emotions and energies have cycles, and it is normal to have ups and downs.
What happened ?
What was the cause of this ?
What was my reaction ?
Until some months ago, I would go into a state a self-destructing mode — luckily enough not physical, but psychological, setting all my beliefs on fire and questioning everything about my life.
This time was different, and I have to say, a little more “healthy”.
I am a lover of all emotions, because I firmly believe they are a compass that tells us something.
It is hard to remember that when they do a takeover of your human-system functions, but if you remember even just for a moment than you can change direction radically.
Emotions are our compass, the choice of our reaction is the real deal.
Without going into the specific, some linked (as always) situations triggered a state that I defined of frustration. I’ll put that word in bold because it’s the key here. A music project that closes, with the consequence of having less energies to dedicate to music (for me it is easier if I have some people to create something when it comes to personal projects); work in which you feel that you fight and you are wasting energies; increasing time of work (my choice, ok) and thus less time to dedicate to other things.
The balance of work-music-friends shifts drastically, and you start the grind of wake-up, go to the office, go back home with no energies, sleep.
The grind kills.
Does it ?
After some days of pure negativity, dipped in full stream of Death/Black/Thrash metal music at all time, I started to feel tired of feeling like that.
I barely could meditate, I could work but human contact was really difficult (mostly because I know I am poisonous, and I don’t like that) and thus I needed more and more time by myself until I felt better.
One day, during a long walking meditation at night…I started asking myself…”Gabriel…what is going on? What do you feel?”
The word that came out was…frustration.
Total, fully frustration.
Going deep and listening to that part of me that was frustrated…frustration for the musical project closed, frustration for feeling the waste of energies on music and at work, frustration for feeling to have to work more.
The next question was…ok, but what is frustration ?
Etymology of words is a powerful tool.
Frustration is: the failure to fulfill a need, or a sentiment linked to do something useless.
There you go.
Waste of energy.
Energy is our real treasure.
By energy I don’t mean some esoteric term, but the amount of actions you can perform per day.
It is a very simple definition, I know.
But when I waste energies in doing something I become angry.
What did not come in my mind until the night after was that…not accepting something is a waste of energies too.
This is pure buddhism.
One of the four Noble Truth of buddhism is Samudaya (suffering).
As Shinzen Young wrote years ago:
S = P x R
Suffering is optional.
I was resisting the pain of wasting energies, I was saying “no, I don’t accept this, I don’t want this!!!” and this was causing suffering and…loss of other energies!
A fantastic vicious circle!
Once I understood that…acceptance was my tool.
Meditating on accepting that things at work can go in directions I don’t agree, and IT IS FINE. Actually, it is normal!
Not agreeing is part of living in a society. And it’s fine!
Then reading Seneca gave me the final blow…
“ Two elements must therefore be rooted out once for all, — the fear of future suffering, and the recollection of past suffering; since the latter no longer concerns me, and the former concerns me not yet.” — Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, 78.14
Everything linked together.
Not accepting was draining my energies and…the final piece was “can I do something NOW to change the situation ?
If the answer is an absolute NO then…go on. Give your energies to something else!
If you can’t really do nothing and you don’t accept…you are fighting a war inside your head. It is a recollection of both past AND future sufferings.
I probably had to go deep into this feelings and learn from them, but it was a liberation when I finally let everything go and focused more on what I could do.
It took some time to actually figure out what I could do practically, in reality, and not in my head.
Nobody will do this for you, you have to stop and listen to yourself.
Accept what it is, take action if you can, and by action I mean even a plan for a future action.
But then…let it go. Live the beauty you have around you, be fine to be low in energies and angry and…take care of yourself.
And possibly be open about this internal turmoil — friends and colleagues will appreciate and know you more.
As final thought…learning to read your emotional compass, accepting its direction and then taking act…must be coupled with the consciousness of where do you spend your attentions and energies.
Hope this tool can help you!
