Is “acceptance” a passive way to move through life?
This comment came through in reference to the post I put out last week (re: learning to tolerate not liking how our bodies look).
It reminds me of our hangup with "letting ourselves go" -- the idea that acceptance or even neutrality is somehow giving up on oneself, succumbing, being a passive recipient. Being weak.
Believe me, "weakness" and succumbing do not sit well with me. It makes my skin crawl. If that's what it felt like, I wouldn't be doing it.
Here's how I see it:
I fought with my body for 30 years and never gave up. I not only resisted acceptance, I assaulted it. You could never accuse me of being passive, weak, or letting anything go. Where I couldn't win, I refused to accept defeat.
All this did was keep my life very, very small.
And the only person to suffer for it was me.
When I begrudgingly, painstakingly moved towards acceptance, it was not without this feeling you speak of. It did feel like surrender.
But I also had nothing left in me to fight. Or, you might say, I started to recognize my strategy was failing and rerouted my strength to a new plan of attack.
Acceptance, instead, led me to the place I find myself in now. Instead of running mental hamster wheels about how to control my biologically designed body (futile), I spend my energy enjoying and growing a business, creating content that makes me feel alive, spending quality time with friends, also making new ones, traveling. I get to actually use my skills and strengths instead of letting them collect dust. I am more versions of successful than I have ever had access to, with the exception of our culture’s definition of #bodygoals.
And yeah, I’ll take it. Because it feels like the opposite of being passive. I’m finally living.
If this does not resonate with you, the invitation might be to focus on the ways in which we are feeling passive in our own lives that we may be projecting onto the body. Are there things you want to do, be, or say? Is active participation in life about setting more boundaries, meeting new goals, or asking for what you need/want more often? Are we translating body size through the lens of our general life stance?
TL;DR—
When we accept ourselves, we don't let ourselves go. We put to rest what is not going anywhere so we can redirect our capacity to that which allows us to grow. It is the very opposite of surrender. It is moving something out of our way so that we can prevail.
