The gift of total acceptance.
As human beings we have a tendency to want things our own way. Our view of the world makes sense to us, and so we assume that it should make sense to everyone else. This really creates a problem when we try to assign our values and expectations on others.
As a father of two wonderful boys, I am so grateful to see them turning into young men who seem to have good values and good behaviors. I honestly think this is more a case of who they are rather than the environment they have been raised in, but there is at least one thing we’ve tried to do that may have helped.
We invested a lot of time in their youth to make sure that they knew they were loved. Not for how they acted, or the choices they made, or their good behavior, or their grades, or talents, or for any other marker that we could have chosen.
They were loved deeply, profoundly, intensely and completely because they were, not because of what they were.
Maybe it’s a lesson we learned on the 6th day of being parents, as a skilled team of healers performed open-heart surgery on my oldest son; a surgery that for a while stopped his heart.
That’s never something easy to contemplate, and still typing this makes me profoundly uncomfortable.
When that’s happening, you soon come to the realization that you want everything to be ok, but honestly, deep in your soul, you have so much love for that little child who is your world, that you’ll take whatever of him you can.
You know that you’ll strike any deal, pay any price, carry any burden and climb any mountain to have another day, and hopefully a wonderful future, with them.
Because they are. Not what they are, or who they are, but simply because they are.
When you totally accept someone, I truly believe they feel it in your interactions. Gone are any attempts to coerce them into choices you feel are ‘right’ for them.
Gone are the transactional behaviors of giving gifts that require some service or behavior, or even thanks.
You do what you do for that person, and you love them the way you love them, regardless of what they do. You accept their choices, even when you don’t agree. You accept that they have views that may run counter to yours, and you don’t try to change them.
There is no greater gift than to totally accept someone, truly, utterly and completely.
It will change your soul, and quite possibly theirs as well.
-- Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddbmusings