Chapter 9 - Action & Change (Part 2)
Balancing Acceptance & Action
Finding the balance between acceptance and action is a question of learning to walk a fine line between unquestioningly accepting life just as it is and being actively involved in the shaping of our reality. And it’s not a choice between accepting and being actively involved; there’s a constant dynamic interplay between these two elements. This is the balance that we have to find—over and over again.
Imagine that I’m driving in my car to your house through the city. As I drive, the traffic gets increasingly heavy until I find that I’m stuck in a traffic jam. What happens now? I’m stuck, not going anywhere. That needs to be accepted. But do I just sit there, doing nothing, resigned to my fate of arriving late? I might. But I might also do what I can to try to alleviate the situation. I might, for example, send you a message to warn you that I’m going to be late. Or I might think about an alternate route that I could take—using my working mind for what it’s good at.
When the traffic starts slowly moving, there’s still some accepting to be done—because I’m clearly not going as fast as I’d like, and I’m still going to arrive late, missing out on precious minutes in your delightful company. Meanwhile, there are plenty of actions to take care of and decisions to be made as I weave through the heavy traffic. Do I take the next turning to try out that alternate route? At the intersection, do I allow three cars to pull out in front of me or only two?
In this example, we see that we can be actively engaged in fixing problems, while recognizing that “It’s all okay” throughout. And it’s the same as we navigate through the traffic of our lives. Finding the balance between acceptance and action.
Everything is perhaps trickier when we consider the issue of balancing acceptance and action in our internal lives. If I have some kind of slightly dysfunctional emotional response—for example, if I’m prone to frequent bouts of jealousy—how much should I try to change my emotional patterns and the behavior that they provoke? And how much should I just accept that this is the way I am? I’m a jealous person.
Once again, it comes back to understanding what can be changed and what can’t. There’s nothing wrong with trying to tackle my jealousy as best I can, using whatever techniques or strategies seem appropriate. That’s probably the only way I can find out for sure if I can change—and how much. And if things go well, I may find that I can make some progress in tackling my jealousy.
Unfortunately, I may soon find that the progress stops. I hit an impossible brick wall—I can only control my tendencies so much. That then needs to be accepted. This can always change, and it may be that after some time my emotional behavior begins to improve. Or get worse. Either way it’s all accepted.
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Is acceptance always more powerful and effective than action?
No. There may be circumstances where our acceptance is very much in the background of what’s taking place. Not absent, but in the background.
If, for example, someone were to suddenly attack me violently, and there’s a real need for me to defend myself, I’m not going to want to dwell for too long on the thought I accept that I’m being attacked. That’s okay. Everything’s okay. I’m going to react to defend myself. I’m going to do what needs to be done. My primary focus will automatically be on action. After the event—assuming I live to tell the tale—I can reflect on just how accepting I was in the moment.
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The Working Mind & Acceptance
As we pursue the balance between acceptance and action, we have various tools at our disposal, and we need to learn to use them in the most efficient and appropriate ways. We know that the obsessive thinking mind is the source of many of our problems and that we should try to reduce our tendency to fall into this type of thinking as best we can. That leaves us with the working mind—for pragmatic thinking and making calculated decisions—and acceptance.
How do we use the working mind and acceptance together?
Imagine that I don’t have a job. Because I don’t have a job, I don’t have much money to do all the things that I want and need to do. So I feel sad.
How do I fix my problems?
First, the obvious thing to do is to think practically about how I can find a job. So I use the working mind for what it’s best at doing. And sure enough it works. Before long I have a new job, and with my improved financial circumstances, I can do all those things that I couldn’t before.
Up to this point, my use of the working mind has been successful. The problem is that I still feel sad. I’d expected that gainful employment and a healthier bank balance would make me happy. And they don’t.
So what do I do? I do what any “normal” person would do—I look elsewhere for the cause of my sadness. If getting a job hasn’t improved my emotional state, then there must be something else that I need to fix.
And the mind finds the answer—I need a new partner. That’s sure to make me happy. That’s where my problem really lies. So I find myself a new partner. And guess what? Before long, I’m feeling sad again.
What’s the solution now?
I need to realize that I may have been mistaken in attributing the cause of my sadness to my unemployment and poverty. Because getting a job and having money hasn’t fixed my emotional difficulties. Neither has finding a new partner.
It’s possible that my problematic emotional states aren’t easily fixable, and simply rearranging the circumstances of my life isn’t the solution. Unfortunately, some of my emotions may have no logical explanation. And if they have no logical explanation, then a purely rational approach can’t fix them.
We need something else: a change in our relationship with our emotions. So we come back to the most effective strategy that’s available to us: acceptance. We simply allow our sadness to be there and see what happens.
The working mind is a powerful tool, often capable of providing solutions. But there will be times when a rational approach can’t fix the problem or bring about the necessary change. And when we’re incapable of working things out rationally, we simply come back to the practice of observing and accepting our experience.