Radical Self-Acceptance
It has become abundantly clear in my life today that constantly berating and belittling myself no longer serves a purpose.
Perhaps at one point it did, but not today, not now. Not for the person I want to be.
I learned from a very young age that I had at all times to be good enough: good enough at school, good enough for my family, good enough for God, good enough to deserve a romantic partner. I was created flawed and incomplete and had to work at being better. I had to be smarter, more hard-working, less selfish, bigger, better, the best. I needed to be the best at something. It didn’t matter what that something was; I just needed to find something at which I was great. It wasn’t like my parents told me so; it was just the cultural and societal norm that being the best at something was optimal, a way to establish one’s worth and value in the world.
School showed me two things: the first, that I loved reading, and the second, that I loved writing. The written word was my wheelhouse. I loved to read and did so at a very high level. I read Jurassic Park for the first time in third grade. I was reading college level novels when most of my classmates were reading Ramona Quimby and Puddle Lane. I loved reading. Writing came to me naturally as well. Daily journaling and book reports were a breeze if not a blast. I just loved the worlds authors created and the worlds I could create myself. I loved who I could be and what I could feel. What had started as Calvin and Hobbes in the newspaper each morning had become Animorphs, Diadem, Darksaber, Sphere, The Lost World. I loved the silent dialogue between the author, myself and everyone else who had read the book. It was a world of nonverbal, and nonphysical, mutual understanding.
For the most part, being really good at reading isn’t something that translates into a clearly defined, prestigious career path. No one told me, “You’re such an amazing reader, you should be a ______ when you grow up.” It simply didn’t happen. In college I studied something I thought was interesting without really considering what jobs may or may not be available in that field. I thought I would go on to law school or graduate school and figure it all out then. It didn’t play out that way.
When you’re in college, or just a college-age person, you are afforded a certain freedom that most other people are not. That freedom is the belief that everything in your life will play out exactly as planned and on the timeline you expect, as long as you work hard enough. I suppose for some people that is true, and was true, but for most people my age, that was not how it happened. Most people I know have made some gains, some losses, some moments of clarity and some of deep, inescapable despair. Most people I know have not accomplished every goal that they had at eighteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight, thirty. Many of us haven’t even accomplished one. Some of didn’t have or didn’t know we had goals at any of those ages. Some of us aren’t even sure about them today.
There is nothing wrong with having goals. Dreams and goals are wonderful. For many of us, it motivates us to keep going, to push through the tough times. Some people are focused, single-minded and have known from a very young age exactly what they want to spend their life doing. I did not. When I was young, I knew I loved books, and dinosaurs, and video games, and swimming, and building forts, and being by myself in the woods, and thinking about the universe. I wanted to be an author, and a paleontologist, and a video game developer, and a scuba instructor, a time traveler and a mountain man. Many of those things I still want to be. Life did not play out that way. Those dreams are still alive.
There is nothing wrong with not achieving your goals.
Radical self-acceptance is this: you are good enough, you are whole enough, you have done enough, you have accomplished enough, you played the cards life dealt you, you did the best you could at the time, you adapted, you overcame, you are loved and can be whatever and whoever you’d like to be. I accept you for exactly who you are and do not need you to change. I accept myself for exactly who I am today, exactly how my life has played out to this point and do not need to change. I can change if I choose to, but it is not required. I am loved, whole and complete regardless of whether or not my goals are accomplished. I am an expression of the Divine regardless of whether or not my peers, my culture or my society labels me as such. Every person on Earth has value. Though I may have things I’d like to work on, I accept myself completely and without reservation and know that I am becoming exactly who the Universe needs to me to be.
That is what radical self-acceptance means to me. To any who need a bit of it in their lives today, I hope this message has reached your heart. I really do love and accept you for who you are today. You have done enough for me. You are worthy, worthwhile and you matter. Thanks for pushing through. See you soon.
