Embracing BOTH AND
How do you BOTH seek change, AND accept what is?
My wish for you as you enter this new year is to truly embrace BOTH AND.
We are told we need to let it all be here, let it all be ok. Practice radical acceptance, and non-judgment, be ok with all the parts of ourselves and others. We don’t have to like it, but we have to accept it.
Yet we are so programmed to want to change things. To do better, eat better, exercise more, be more productive, rest more, journal more, meditate more, get more sleep. We are programmed to seek change, to make things DIFFERENT. Those two things feel contradictory to me. If you are truly ok with and accept something, you typically don’t want to change it.
So how do we hold both? How do we BOTH seek change, AND accept what is? How do we both want to eat better, but also accept the fact that we just finished the rest of the holiday cookies? How do we both want to work out more, and accept our bodies just the way they are? How do we both want to earn more money and accept the abundance we already have?
Every moment of our lives thus far has played a part in making us who we are. ALL of the things and choices we’ve made make up who we are and our experience of the present moment. They all matter, they all figure in, yet they no longer exist.
There is only this present moment. So, if yesterday you happened to eat all the holiday cookies, that’s ok. That’s no longer this moment; you get to choose again. And again, and again, and again.
We make choices all day every day, and then typically we take some sort of action based on those choices. Choice-Action. That’s the “seeking change” part of the equation. The “acceptance” part is a little trickier. I believe it lies in surrender. We make choices and take action, but then we have to let go and trust- we have to surrender. We can only control our own actions, we have no control over the actions of the other billions of scenarios playing out all around us every day. Not only in our immediate close proximity world but the bigger world at large. It’s not in our hands. So we have to take whatever action we can, affect the things we can, and then we have to let go. We surrender- until we have to choose again.
So the loop becomes Choice-Action-Surrender. Over and over and over again.
If you can really practice (and it is a practice- at least for me, it’s almost a moment-to-moment exercise) the act of surrender and acceptance, then you can truly hold BOTH AND. You can both want to see change, AND accept what is.
The world really is all about BOTH AND, it’s not either/or. We can feel both sad AND happy. We can be both full AND still want to eat dessert. We can be both exhausted AND still want to stay up and watch the next episode. We can be both terrified and excited, feel both alone and smothered. And not only can it be both and, but it’s changing ALL the time. There is no constant/permanent state. At a molecular level, everything is shifting and moving and changing literally every moment of every day.
I believe we default to “either/or” thinking in part because we have been sold a narrative of “shoulds”. We have been told we should always feel good. We should always be happy and pain-free and have lots of energy. And if we don’t, something is “wrong” and we should do something about it. But if you look at everything in nature, you see cycles and patterns, ebbs and flows. There is no ALWAYS. It is not ALWAYS daytime, or winter, or windy, or raining. A flower is not always in bloom. There is no constant or permanent state, not in nature, not in our bodies. We will not ALWAYS feel good, or pain-free, or energized. We are not always inhaling, or contracting a muscle. The moon is not always full, and the tide is not always high. We must first open and relax our hands in order to grasp and hold something.
There is no one thing, no one right answer, no magic bullet. It is BOTH needing to eat right AND letting ourselves have treats sometimes. It is BOTH getting plenty of sleep AND staying up too late talking to a friend. It’s all of it. It all gets to be here. It all factors in and all matters, and it is always shifting and changing. And all we can do in any given moment is make another choice, take another action, and then surrender.
We can embrace BOTH AND.