Acceptance

Moving Toward Love

“Acceptance is not love. You love a person because he or she has lovable traits, but you can accept everybody just because they are alive and human.”

Albert Ellis

There are as many human differences as there are human beings. There are traits unique to each person, common within communities or tribes, and typical of nations. Southerners speak with a particular cadence—some of us drawl more than others, and all of us have peculiar regional dialects. The same is true for mid-westerners, north-easterners, westerners, and Native Americans. Our speech differences identify us as to tribe and place. If I were of Chinese descent and lived in California, even if my family immigrated centuries ago, there would be an identifying trace in my speech. Think what a boring world it would be if everyone spoke with the same tone and rhythm. Our differences should be viewed as something precious.

All Americans came to this land, which once belonged to tribal people who were themeselves divided and territorial, from elsewhere. My family came from the British Isles in the 1840's. Your family probably traces its heritage to some place other than where you live right now. Many of our children, the ones we call the millennial generation, began traveling to other continents early and now consider themselves citizens of the world. Technology has allowed them to navigate the planet, through its different customs and languages, with relative ease. Because of this exposure to other lands, other people, and other ways of life, they do not have the biases of older generations. In fact, they are far more accepting of all kinds of differences than their parents and grandparents. They represent human progress.

We are growing toward acceptance—evolving toward it. And always when there are tectonic shifts of this sort, especially when one particular band or clan sees themselves as being on the loosing end of that change, there will be upheaval in the population. Just as when there is a major earthquake, the land heaves up and rearranges itself—so it is with human beings. We shake and quake, we run for our lives and scream in fear, and some of us don't make it. When the tremors are over, and the earth settles, even though it doesn't look the same, we begin to assess and start over. First we pick around in the ashes for what looks familiar, we search for our neighbors and our family, photos of what links us to our past. We know we cannot recreate what existed before, but we try to find touchstones that comfort us. Because we are unique creatures, we behave in different ways to this semi-cataclysmic change. Some of us rant and rave and become violent, some of us cry, and some of us just begin to pick up the pieces. Some of us simply watch and wonder.

Acceptance is not love, but it is progress toward love. Perhaps we must experience division before we can come together. Certainly, that has happened before. I am, however, convinced that we will come together—because that is the movement of human evolution. We need each other. We need all the differences, and some day, we will recognize that and celebrate.

                                                                In the Spirit,

                                                                    Jane