I was running up Greybeard Mountain when I reached a state of total acceptance. I accepted the pain and fatigue in my legs along with the beauty of the snow and ice-covered trail. I accepted the thoughts that questioned why I was doing this and the lessons of humility and perseverance that running teaches me. I accepted the difficult conditions of the day: the steepness of the trail, the slippery surfaces that caused each footfall to slide a little bit backward, and the growing fatigue in my body as I neared the top of my second ascent of the mountain. To try and fight these things would be futile. Acceptance was the only answer.
With acceptance comes gratitude. I was filled with a sense of gratitude towards the mountain that had stood there for eons and would remain there long after I have left this world. It had no malice towards me, merely indifference. It was not there to be conquered, only experienced, accepted as it was.
Acceptance is not easy. Sometimes it takes moments of physical or emotional stress to force us to let down our guard and reach that state where we can fully experience all that is happening around and inside us and to just say yes to all of it.
We spend so much of our time battling the things we find difficult or unpleasant, trying with all our might to push them away, to pretend that they don’t exist. But those dark spaces remain in our periphery, tainting everything else we see until we come to the point of accepting them. We have trouble accepting even the good things in life. We wish that they were somehow better or that there were more of them instead of accepting and being grateful for what already is. In the end, we waste our time either pushing things away or pulling things towards us instead of merely accepting what is already right in front of us.
A funny thing happens when we allow ourselves to accept everything: we get a glimpse of completeness. At last, after feeling so torn and tattered we can feel whole again. If we could just accept everything as it is, how differently would we view our lives?
Based on a journal entry from 2.23.15
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