Introduction

Welcome to my journey to learn acceptance. I’ve decided to write out my thoughts, feelings, lessons and revelations as I grow into the human being I want to become; as I come closer to living in a way that I know will make happiness attainable. My intention is to take advantage of my skills in self-awareness and self-analysis to show my readers the small steps and slight perspective changes that can eventually result in life-changing shifts from fear to love; despair to happiness; isolation to community; judgment to acceptance. I’m hoping that, by sharing my thoughts, feelings and struggles throughout this journey, I will be able to explain things in a way that my fellow skeptics can grasp, and to see the small shifts as they happen to better understand the end result. I feel like when we see people who have “arrived”, the whole thing seems odd, obnoxious, naïve and unattainable. I’m hoping to show how it happens along the way to expose acceptance, happiness and this better way of living in a light that seems more logical, attainable and sustainable.

For this first entry, I guess I should introduce myself. I will also summarize some of the events and realizations that have occurred thus far.

I could fill a whole novel just by explaining who I am, what I think and believe, and why I am the way I am. I’ll try to keep this pretty short and to-the-point as it relates to the journey I am on right now. I’m a young woman in her mid-twenties, following the career path of software developer/systems engineer. I grew up as a sheltered, introverted, artistic, sad and lonely girl, who enjoyed rock and metal music as well as hip hop dance. As the Myers-Briggs personality type INFJ, I was always very intuitive, analyzed life and people, was wise beyond my years (or tried to grow up too fast?), and strived to be the most decent and moral person I possibly could. That’s what I learned made a worthy person. As I saw all the immoral and disgusting behaviors around me, I became very bitter. No one seemed to share my views of how one should live his or her life, and I felt very alone. I had a lot of ego-based self-confidence, because I knew I’d lived my life as best I could, following my values and morals. However, society angered and saddened me. I felt like everyone around me was looking for a quick-thrill, and led a hedonistic and shallow life, and that this fact meant I would never find people who thought the same way I did. I was alone is this nasty world, and therefore I would never be understood, and never be happy. My happiness was dependent upon others, and others never lived up to my expectations.

This was true until I met someone very special. Don’t get me wrong – I was already trying to grow as a person. I very strongly believe that life is what you make of it, and if you want things to change, you need to plan out how to do it, and then go do it. I started making changes. I joined groups that had similar interests to me; I read books that I felt I connected with, or would feed my desire to grow and improve myself. But it wasn’t until I met a particular man that I would truly make steps towards becoming a better person who was actually capable of finding happiness. At least, that’s how I see it.

Why? Because this man was a wonderful, thoughtful, sweet, caring, compassionate, loving and patient man, and he had a whole lot of flaws. Deal breakers. He had some intense issues in his past. Not any legal trouble or anything, just character flaws and baggage – deal breakers based on my own view of the world and how people should behave. Normally I wouldn’t even give such a person a chance, but for some reason my gut told me he was a good guy, and I cautiously allowed my gut (and heart?) to lead my actions in getting to know him and giving him a chance. This caused so much internal conflict and tension, to the point of illness and physical distress, but my heart made me press on, and I kept reminding myself that I could back out at any moment. But I didn’t want to. Dealing with all of his flaws, and getting to know him anyway, was so much emotional and mental work for me. I worried about my motives and about what was really going on here. I tried to figure it all out, but I couldn’t make sense of it. I really didn’t trust myself. But after a while, it became a little bit easier, because I started to see his soul. He has a beautiful soul. He has made a lot of mistakes, and he continued to make mistakes with me, but I know he meant well, I know he tried, and I know he cared for me. This was the very first time I had not written someone off for such flaws, and really saw past them into the soul of the person. I actually made efforts to truly understand him. I cared for him. I wanted his happiness as much, if not more, than my own. This was serious. I’d been in love before, but even then, I was determining simply whether or not the person was good enough for me. I wanted their happiness, but not at the detriment of my own. If they screwed up, they screwed up. It didn’t matter what their intentions or motives were. But with this one, I could look beyond all that and see that he really was a good, kind person inside, who was trying to do what he thought was right, and was simply making mistakes, and then trying to correct them as quickly as possible. But the other side of me was so confused and angry and couldn’t understand any of this. I felt like I was being naïve. But I know he was genuine. I still came to realize that he was not right for me, which was a sad and painful admission. As much as I cared for him, I could not spend my life with him. There were too many incompatibilities of character and soul - at least at this point in both of our lives.

Through this experience I fought with an age-old question: Can people really change? That question haunted me the entire relationship. I wanted him to prove to me that people could, because I didn’t believe it. People can change their actions, because they learn that they don’t like the consequences, or they learn that it keeps them from what they want in life. But people don’t change their nature. If they’ve made a “change”, they most likely have a struggle with that change every single day, possibly forever. And what if one day they are weak, and they lose that battle with themselves? People don’t suddenly become morally against things they once did. They just see the consequences and understand them better, and decide it isn’t the right thing to do. But they may still have a desire to do those things. They may break down and fall back into old habits, if their life situation deteriorated and tempted them with an opportunity. That’s what you have to worry about. You have to know and understand the demons of someone you want to share a life with, and be ready to stand behind them and support them if they fall.

So let’s get back to me and my journey. From all of this I was able to realize that I need to find a way to accept people better. I’m not talking general acceptance… I already don’t care if you are short, tall, fat, skinny, gay, straight, black, white, rich, poor… none of that matters to me. I accept everyone in that way. What bothers me is when people behave immorally. Usually, they KNOW better, and I just completely don’t understand or accept that, and it stresses me out and makes me very angry. I need to realize that people are on their own path, and they are learning and growing, just like me. They are just at their own pace, and you can’t rush them. They’ve learned things I haven’t learned yet; I’ve learned things they haven’t learned yet. You can’t try to teach someone lessons they are not ready for. This will be much easier to handle with friends and strangers, but it is a completely different ball game when dealing with someone I might want to spend the rest of my life with. So I’m starting small. I’m trying to adjust my perception when dealing with friends, co-workers, acquaintances and strangers. Understanding people and giving them some slack when it has no effect on me is easier than looking into the future with flaw-colored glasses (does that cute phrase work?). However, I know that if I am able to understand, forgive and accept a certain level of flaws and mistakes, I will be able to find happiness. I will be able to accept a good person despite some flaws that may currently be unfathomable to me. I already don’t expect perfection, but there are some very specific areas that I am really strict on, and I know it would help if I could understand and accept, without condoning, another point of view. I don’t have to be OKAY with it… I just have to be able to see why they were that way, see the growth they’ve made, and be able to put things in the past and let them stay there. Sounds very healthy, right? Even easy? Well, we’ll see.