Accept the things you can't change (?)
An acquaintance of mine is a middle-aged man from my home country. He has lived here for many years. I admire him because of how he always chooses to go his own way. A few days ago, I was reading a message by him in a group chat, talking about his next. Another person angrily replied to his post, criticizing him for being somewhat indifferent to what is happening at the moment in our home country.
His answer was "Accept the things you can't change". There is truth in this answer: we cannot change the situation, or at least not alone or a short amount of time. There is also wisdom in it, that we have to keep our inner peace. But I see two different reactions, two different perspectives: frustration, and acceptance.
My own instinctive reaction to the situation was frustration. Reading the discussion made me think more about my own response. Which perspective should I choose? Should I accept the situation and not make my life miserable, or refuse to accept it, which makes me a fire under the ashes, boiling water that burns where it pours?
In our personal lives, when we see that something is wrong, we invest time and energy into fixing it. Here, it is different. We see that something is wrong, completely wrong. But we also see that fixing it won't happen soon. It is a long, slow, and painful process with years of self-sacrifise of many people.
I know that the system is corrupt, and people are suffering under it. I do not accept this ugliness, but I accept that I can't change it, that as an individual what I do won't make a big difference in the grand scheme of things. Welcome to the realities of life! Sad realities. But who said that life is supposed to be happy. It's all nonsense. There are many bitter realities that all of us have to swallow in our adult lives. Discrimination, loss of our loved ones, wars, and suffering of fellow fellow human beings. This is one of those realities. But despite all this, life has to go on somehow. We can't stop living and sit around feeling bad about it all.
Does acceptance mean indifference and passivity? No, not for me at least. I try to make a change, no matter how small and insignificant, wherever and whenever possible.