There are situations, for example, a serious illness or addiction of another, when a quick and easy solution simply does not exist. You can struggle pointlessly and for a long time, try to change something, but the situation continues to stand still. Because it’s not about us and not about our behavior, but about the behavior and decisions of another person, which are difficult to somehow influence, if not impossible. In this case, acceptance is the best choice.
The paradox of individuality and acceptance
Slogans that celebrate individuality and difference are popular in popular culture: “Be yourself,” “Don’t look at others.” Few people like to think of themselves as ordinary people. Everyone is looking for what makes them special. Society rewards uniqueness, but if you dig deeper, it turns out that the cult of individuality is very superficial and people who are truly different from others repel others.
Despite the seemingly positive attitude towards individuality, people remain social creatures, which means they like to feel unity with others and their approval. Moreover, we can condemn in other people the same traits that we encourage in ourselves: for example, we perceive frankness as rudeness or consider the interlocutor’s love for a rare musical genre as posturing.
It turns out that when talking about otherness, society constantly broadcasts to us the same contradictory message: you should be an individual, but not too different from others.
Acceptance - what is it?
Acceptance is often confused with “justification” or “humility.” That is, if we accept a person, then we allegedly justify his actions and behavior and humiliate himself in front of him. Actually this is not true. Acceptance means simply allowing a person to be himself, as he is, and not trying to change him. He is he, you are you. He has the right to his privacy, you have the right to yours.
— acceptance allows you to save your energy and act consciously, not impulsively.
- acceptance allows you to return to yourself, to your feelings and needs, to your life, instead of living life for another person.
— acceptance allows you to build the boundaries of what is permitted and learn to live within these boundaries.
Why is it so difficult for us to accept differences?
The main reason for the rejection of differences in society is our sociality. The easiest way to feel close to other people is to find a common enemy. Those who are different from the rest are ideal for this role.
Psychologists define this behavior as a type of egoistic bias. By criticizing something in others, a person maintains his positive image and increases self-esteem. It sounds unpleasant, but almost all of us behave this way from time to time.
The reason for believing that you are always right and others are wrong is not only the need to maintain self-esteem. Sometimes this is due to the need to gain control, which is also biologically and psychologically determined. People unlike us are difficult to predict and therefore impossible to control. This is scary and repulsive, but most often unconsciously, so we attribute our dislike to the negative qualities of differences. It is easier to decide that a person is wrong than to admit that you are afraid of his unpredictability. In addition, prejudices, to which we are all susceptible to one degree or another, play an important role in the rejection of differences. Many people like to think that they are free from prejudice or that their prejudices are justified. But even when prejudices are based on personal or authoritative experience for you, they are often erroneous and prevent you from accepting other people.
In his book The Nature of Prejudice, psychologist Gordon Allport writes that at a basic level, our stereotypes are simply mental categories. The human mind strives to organize and classify everything, so it is easier for it to perceive the world. Once formed, categories become the basis for prejudice. Often we learn them not even from personal experience, but we adopt them from our family and environment. This is why it is so difficult to get rid of stereotypes and accept other people's differences. Categories and patterns are so ingrained in our thinking that it takes a lot of conscious effort to get rid of them.
Disappointment
By building relationships on illusions and expectations, sooner or later you will inevitably encounter disappointment. Disappointment naturally arises when illusion and reality collide (meeting a real person, his strengths and weaknesses). At the same time, reality can destroy your personal myth about existing relationships.
Often the creation of illusions is a desire to run away and hide from a frightening reality, supported by fears. By creating “beautiful illusions” of relationships, you thus choose to be deceived, subconsciously feeling and even knowing that this beauty has a limited “shelf life” and you will inevitably be exposed. For example, afraid of being left alone, you can turn a blind eye to your partner’s infidelities for a very long time, maintaining the illusion that you don’t notice anything and everything is as before between you. Maintaining such an illusion will require a lot of energy to keep the growing feelings of resentment, rage or anger inside. There are many factors that can speed up or slow down the onset of the “hour X”, but the “friction” from unresolved internal conflict can cause significant harm to you.
So, the need to constantly play a role, maintaining the illusion of imaginary well-being and happiness, is a unprofitable investment of your life time. The more attention you pay to the role you play, the less time you have to show your true self. But at the same time, by creating illusions in relationships, you lose the opportunity to experience real, sincere feelings that cannot arise artificially. In order for the grain to germinate and bear fruit, it must be thrown into soil favorable for growth and ripening. However, the soil, saturated with expectations and illusions, is depleted and dead. It is very difficult to grow through its loose base.
The sweetness of illusions is always sticky and slightly cloying. At first, it may seem that the aroma and taste of these illusions are pleasant, but the more you “chew” them, the greater the feeling of heaviness inside.
Philologist's website
The feeling that people are imperfect causes so much distress to many. I will not touch upon whether in this case a person is critical of himself. I will only touch on the issue of our attitude towards other people.
We are friends with someone, we love someone, we have conflicts with someone... Relationships are constantly developing, and people change. I recently thought about this question and came to some conclusions.
1. For some reason we tend to see either black or white.
There are no good people, just as there are no bad ones. There are no good or bad characters. There is no perfection or ideal, just like there is no evil incarnate. Each person is a set of certain qualities, maybe you shouldn’t look only at pieces of the picture, but should look at the work as a whole?
2. We are too demanding of others.
Why? Why do we constantly expect something from people, and when we don’t receive it, we are disappointed? Isn't this selfishness? And aren’t we putting pressure on people with our expectations? To feel this situation more clearly, I suggest you remember the parents who often torment their children with their studies and demand good grades. It's depressing and limiting. This puts a person under a certain mold, hiding other aspects of it. Maybe we won’t wait and demand, but will rejoice in what is given and discover new facets of the soul?
3. We look at people superficially and label them.
For some reason, we don’t bother ourselves with thoughts about a person’s past and present. We don't try to look at his life from different angles. Often, having heard an opinion about someone, we use it as a tracing paper and apply it when we meet. Or, without getting to know a person deeply, we make incorrect judgments about him, which we pass on to others. This is again a limitation, subsuming into stereotypes. Maybe we should learn to hear people, feel, and not pick up someone’s passing thought, considering it the ultimate truth?
4. We judge.
Why do we allow ourselves to do this? Why do we evaluate actions, evaluate people. Why are people a system for us, and we try to point a finger at what seems to us to be a “failure” in this system, and at the same time manage to get petty pleasure, schadenfreude? Would we like to be treated the same way? Did they talk bad about us? I think no. But for some reason we allow ourselves to do this to others.
5. We are trying to change people, tell them what they should be like, how to live and how to act.
Each person has his own path in life, with his own personal trials. Why do we impose our templates on him, considering them the absolute truth? After all, everyone has their own truth in each individual case. Maybe you should just be kind to people, bring them joy and warmth, and not instructions on the path of life? It’s so important to feel responsible for what you say to a person. There are no universal recipes in situations, and a wrong action committed at your instigation, which made a person even unhappier, will fall a heavy burden on you. You just need to bring your love and desire for harmony to people.
6. Who do we love more?
Are we sincere with others? Do we love them and really want their best when we advise them? Or are we, like parrots, repeating the hackneyed truths that dominate society? Do we feel the strings of a person’s soul that make him unlike anyone other than himself? Do we love him when we talk to him, do we want to hear him? Or we want to assert ourselves, seem smarter and only speak ourselves, perceiving the words of another as a bridge to the next rant about ourselves and our lives. Do we respect our interlocutor at this moment? Do we love him or do we love ourselves in this moment?
These are just a few points. But already here you can see how important it is to accept people as they are. With advantages and disadvantages, disadvantages and advantages. Yes, and minus here is a relative concept, because the view is very subjective, and you cannot see much with ordinary eyes. “Only the heart is vigilant.”
In every person there is a manifestation of Divine Light, Divine Love. Do we feel this when we talk to people? Not always. But is it possible that if we look at a person and see his Light in him, then he will become better and brighter, and there will be more joy and love in the world? And if we do not put him into a framework, then we will see him completely, with different colors, shades, with all the richness of his soul. Maybe the world will become brighter, our soul will become more joyful, as well as the soul of the one with whom we communicate?
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Category: Diary of a Philologist
