As my granddaughter ages (she is six years old), I can observe the growth of the virtue of acceptance in her little heart. “Mine”, once her favorite, pervasive word, diminishes as she learns from adults who care about her, the annoying value of sharing. And then the joy.
Team athletics at any level will increase the acceptance growth almost automatically. Success always buoys self-worth. But defeat builds character, in the forms of learning to tolerate teammates’ ineptness; how to join not envy gifted peers’ success; defining one’s natural strengths and weaknesses; and accepting the loser’s role as a necessary part of any competition. Childhood and adolescent athletics provide a fine source of what a politician’s life requires – what to do when you fail.
In card games, “You gotta know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, and know when to run.” In classroom education, you find there are always those smarter than you;;in conflicts always somebody bigger and tougher; in music usually a “first chair” player who deserves to be there.
Acceptance as a virtue is the developed capacity to embrace what one simply doesn’t like. Or if you prefer, a willingness to gracefully live with an unfortunate situation of failure.
Tolerance, a first step towards acceptance, endures unchosen or unfortunate differences. Acceptance gracefully embraces them.
Healthcare situations perennially feature invitations to grow a bit more acceptance. The scenario repeats over and over again. Bad news? How serious? Treatment options? Give up or fight like hell? Waning treatment effectiveness? Search for all non-medical options. No medical options left? Accept or resent? At that point, the virtue of acceptance must have grown robust through all previous missed free throws, strike-outs, burned cakes, and blown interviews. It’s showtime. Can you give it all over to a higher power or will you die hostile, ranting and raving, still fighting against the wind?
The phenomenon of addiction recovery, never comprehended by those not in it, carries profound examples of negotiating between protracted effort on the one hand, and elegant acceptance on the other. These are life long struggles for a significant segment of citizens. That profound and common situation is captured in a segment of Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous prayer, asking for the “serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Living out what that prayer suggests makes up a major part of the new recovery lifestyle. After close and pivotal elections it can be sorely needed.
Aging itself beckons us to develop acceptance. I experienced that as I have gradually, years ago, given up many aspects of life that are common to younger people— playing shortstop, running for miles, dancing vigorously, going a single day without a nap, and eating whatever I want without gaining weight. For the aging, there is no keeping both mild and serious disabilities – losses of appearance and function— at bay, regardless of what well-meaning people say about “Moving your body, caring for children, or whatever else will “keep you young’. It won’t. Fight it a bit, for a while, but you are indeed aging. Accept it, smile, and think about others. It is life and it’s ok.
People who have not negotiated the path described above well may still be quite broad-thinking due to their unique human development. But they are more likely to be stubbornly self-absorbed inside, dealing childishly with loss and failure. They take every major loss so personally inside that they build up resentments of individuals who they see as having unfairly bested them, even resenting, nursing hurt, and enkindling anger. They feel these feelings over and over again…and again…and again. (Resentment, from Latin re, again, with sentio, to feel – sometimes called frozen anger) causes distance from whoever may have wronged or even fairly defeated them. In addiction treatment, people need to divest themselves of resentments or they turn into a nasty brand of apathy, or worse for those around them, hostility. All of those are destructive to positive relationships in self-pity.
Seen in politicians, resentment becomes a sort of sad entitlement that is willing to abandon mature acceptance for the feelings of revenge, hostile disparagement, and sarcastic negative branding. It can precipitate even lies of victimhood which are unseemly in an adult. They then aren’t playing well with anybody.
Resentments that have taken the place of needed acceptance tend to hide. They are routinely denied by the resentful person but show up when tweaked by sensitive questions and shared observations from savvy observers. Then they turn into blatant anger. Name the self-pity of a victim player and you’ll have hell to pay!
How can we voters discern the quality of a political candidate’s virtue of acceptance? We can inquire about their failures and how they have weathered them, and carefully observe their emotions in response. Some examples:
– Will you tell us a story about a time you showed grace and class after losing a big athletic game, a bet, a debate, the passage of a political bill, or any level of an election? How did you feel? Then, what did you say and do?
– How did you feel when you saw Al Gore humbly, clearly, and masterfully acknowledge defeat in the 2000 presidential election? What would you have said to him if you had the chance? https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Al+Gore+acknowledging+defeat+after+the+2000+presidential+election
– How did you learn as a child to be a good loser? Will you tell us that story?
– Will you tell us a story about some dream you had for your life as a child? Who knew about it? What happened to that dream? What hopes fueled it? What bumps in the road impeded it, and what eventually defeated it? How did you deal with your feelings about that ending and how do you feel about it now?
– What is currently disappointing to you? Do you see yourself either bitterly holding on too long to failures or maybe not pursuing your hopes vigorously and long enough?
