Students endlessly teach and inform, sometimes indirectly but no less effectively. My own awakening to the idea of acceptance came from a student who told me that I was "the most patient person" she had ever met. All of a sudden (a wonderful phrase when we take a moment to fully hear it), I felt the power of a critical moment, a moment wherein I experienced an instant conception of what my patience meaning perspective as a teacher and as a person meant. Before I responded, I made sure to thank her for telling me something she thought a very positive recognition. Then I told her that I felt there was something about the idea of patience that caused me some discomfort. We talked about it for while as I have done with other students ever since. We examined what latent meaning perspectives lurked behind this seemingly benign expression.
Patience implies a very distinct disparity in power. The patient party generally holds some power over the recipient or victim of patience, as with an adult over a child. As a teacher, I wanted no such disparity. It wasn't true. I might serve as guide to unknown territory in whatever I taught, but students participated as equals in their journey. It was their journey after all. I wanted to serve their need not my own. Patience also makes an inherent demand by expressing its limits: "You are trying my patience," and "I am running out of patience." It can also come as a kind of warning to the recipient, "I have shown a lot of patience with you." As one student finally put it, "Patience is a threat." Whenever we express patience, impatience and punishment hover nearby. I wanted to feel unconditional positive regard and not the patronizing attitude that patience may represent.
If we want to offer unconditional positive regard for ourselves and others, we also want to offer unconditional acceptance for who we or they are. No matter the number of times we need to assist in the same way, answer the same question, or help in the same activity, we accept that need as genuine and always original because the person with whom we work genuinely needs as many iterations as necessary to fully enter into whatever we find at hand. When we feel and show unconditional positive regard, we also feel and show acceptance. Acceptance never limits itself. If we say, "I am running out of acceptance," we belie the very idea of acceptance. Acceptance doesn't hold out an arbitrary standard for accomplishment: "You should do it this way." Acceptance joyfully opens to new ways of approaching an old task. Acceptance happily finds new ways of teaching a task to suit the needs of the learner. Acceptance gladly and authentically acknowledges all the accomplishments a learner achieves on the way to a goal even if the goal has not been reached. Acceptance always assumes the essential good from which and for which we or another person strive. Acceptance sees success in every effort that we make or another makes even when that effort does not work directly in achieving a specific goal. Acceptance comes to us as a "Yes" to life and those who live it, in response to the "No," the negativity of the "tyranny of the shoulds."
When we make acceptance our habit, we can rely on it as our guide to behavior. Many times I have felt some way or acted some way toward myself or another that seemed a bit strained, so I reflected a moment and asked, "Is this acceptance?" Whatever I answer, I just get back to acceptance, and all the tension disappears. When I can experience a "Yes" as gently powerful as acceptance, I don't need to spend time and effort trying to stop an action I don't like. The energy behind that action simply shifts to working with acceptance, and whatever the difficulty might have been doesn't exist or come into existence. Acceptance can go a very long way to helping me bring my intentions fully into existence through the actions I choose based on my acceptance. Mindfully habitual acceptance allows us to naturally realize the gentle power of unconditional positive regard, compassion, and forgiveness in the problem solving process of becoming the self and in the existential search for that becoming self.