“…flaws and faults are minor. These are not really so important. Love is.” Weiss, Brian L., M.D. Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past-Life Therapy that Changed Both Their Lives. (p. 68-69). Touchstone. Kindle Edition.
So I’m back again to exploring the concept of Acceptance. My first, “knee-jerk” reaction, if you will, to realizing that I wasn’t going to finish working on Balance and Acceptance was confused disappointment and I initially thought that I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t working hard enough on it, and I just needed to “do better.”
I still am not sure how I feel about that, i.e., having worked on two significant concepts for almost 30 years. Although, it does make sense as I continue to work to find acceptance and to achieve balance and have done so since the mid-1990s.
I was often baffled as I would be “better” at acceptance at times, and more “balanced” at times, but those times didn’t last. I wondered if it just meant that it was a particularly difficult series of life lessons I had chosen, and that it would just take time. But now I have come to understand, as I have been reminded that life lessons are just that, “life lessons,” and are meant to last lifelong. My second “knee-jerk” reaction was “…boy, I sure picked a doozy” for my first life lessons.
Before I identified these, Balance and Acceptance, as my first life lessons, I was tormented by ruminative thoughts of “why?” or “why not?” It was hard to accept what I perceived as the “world being against” me, and “I just can never catch a break” with the very real likelihood that, instead, I had just been on the wrong path all along.
I came to my career passion, a calling, if you will, relatively later in life, i.e., I was 36 when I entered graduate school at San Diego State University, working on a Master in Social Work. I already HAD a master’s degree in Communication, with an emphasis in Radio/TV/Film, and thought, “shouldn’t that be enough?” Shouldn’t I be able to achieve success and happiness with THAT degree? I turned out that I could not, and over time, as I was able to reflect, I realized that I had been on the wrong pathway all along. This is the round-about way that I came to understand that Acceptance is my path, and that Acceptance is my life lesson.
This leads to another favorite word, serendipity, which means “the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.” I’m pleased, indeed, happy with this definition of serendipity, as I have found great happiness and contentment in my serendipitous path starting with the M.S.W., and culminating with a much-loved career as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. It’s amazing how easy things are when you are on the “right path,” doing the “right thing” and when you get “out of your own way.”
I will continue this series pertaining to Many Lives, Many Masters and how I came to identifying and operationalizing my first two life lessons after a much-anticipated and much-deserved vacation.
Bon Voyage, and see you in Early July when we take a closer look at “Balance.”