From every commercial and in almost every friendly conversation – we see and hear that you can become anything and whoever you want to.
So, for us life is a shopping mall, a supermarket, in which you shop who and how you want to be.
And on top of this we get this preservation (from collective hidden sources) that everything is up to us.
And if we don’t get what the commercials and common talk promise us it is because of us.
We all are convinced that what makes our life difficult, problematic, unsuccessful or unsatisfying – is our weaknesses, our faults, our self-inflicted problems, our laziness, our lack of self-discipline, lack of will power, etc.
So, we all want to (need to) change.
To what an extent are we living our life now with the inner conviction that we are on the road of improvement, and that things are getting better in us. To what an extent does this conviction gives us the power and stamina to go on?
And how would we feel if we would realize that maybe we are not on the road of improvement? And the way we are now is the way we will remain?
If we would know that in 20 years’ time that we would remain with the same faults, the same weaknesses, the same self-inflicted problems – how would we feel about that? Would we be indifferent? Disappointed? Shocked?
If we come to a person in mid-life and suggest to him to accept himself as he is – good and bad, weak and strong, success and failure – now, as it is, and it will never change – how would he feel about it? How disappointed from 1-10, how indifferent from 1-10, how shocked from 1-10?
To what an extent could he go on living with that knowing? And what would be his quality of life with this knowing?
Now, what is the truth?
The truth is, that we are born fixed, there is no reason to think that our personality is not as fixed and wholesome as much as our body. All you can do with the body is develop it, the same with the components of our personality and character, no change, because it is already formed, only develop.
But here is a catch, if you don’t accept yourself first exactly as you are, not only you cannot develop, you cannot live a full stratifying life.
Living without self-acceptance is living being foreign to oneself, being divorces from oneself. Living only under the condition of possible change. And if this will not happen – I don’t accept myself.
No. It should be the other way around; first self-acceptance and only then can you have a life and possibly develop and turn from having infantile life to a mature one.
Living under the condition of self-change some time in the future is like paying by delayed checks. One day you will have to face yourself.
But self-acceptance is one of the most difficult things in the world, no one wants to do it.
If you don’t accept yourself fully and with no conditions and expectations – you are not authentic, you are not you, you are not even someone else, and you are a ghost, a wishing to be creature, no more.
You must accept yourself, as you are, in order to be.
Gabriel