I accept human nature

Hey, dear reader. How are you doing? Recently I’ve been extra-upset about people. Perhaps you’ve noticed. Well, great news! As of yesterday, I accept human nature.

Partly it was thanks to my rabbi. Last walk she told me, “People don’t know what we want.”

We were walking through the neighborhood near shul, sampling fruit off the neighbor trees. It was a beautiful late summer day.

I’ve seen people not know what they want. Needs shift and change, not because people are irresponsible, selfish, and poorly communicating (although maybe that too). It’s mostly a lack of deciding.

I get annoyed like, “Figure it out! Your behaviors affect other people. We need to negotiate our needs, so we can do consent and move together in this messy dance.”

Truly I wish everyone would spend abundant time in introspection. Get clear on who you are and what you want. But it’s hard when everything is changing.

Human nature has been stressing me out. Since I can’t change other people, how can I change myself to be less derailed by fuckery? I’m working on radical acceptance as a way to create less problems for myself.

I accept human nature

I went to a grief ritual, and I loved the writing component. The phrase I chose for my ten minutes of writing was “I accept.” Let me share with you what I wrote.

grief

I accept my mom’s love as part of who I am, and I accept how it formed me.

I accept my human limitations as I live in this disabled body.

I accept my life span.

I accept my weaknesses and failures.

I accept Lifeforce as bigger than me.

I accept the truth of who I am and why I’m on earth.

I accept myself in all my parts, layers, aspects, and behaviors unconditionally.

I accept my own needs unconditionally.

I accept a non-hierarchical worldview where the goal is not to sort into better or worse, but to tell the truth and experience.

I accept the experience of my own life without the need to judge.

I accept the love of Parent Earth.

I accept the darkness of the seed underground, darkness of the womb, darkness of the tomb, darkness of New Moon and eclipse, darkness of night, darkness of the spaces between the stars.

I accept human nature as different from angel nature, the nature of insects, and the nature of water and stones.

I accept myself as human for the time I have left in this body.

I accept my mistakes as holy and part of the experience of being.

I accept my mom’s mistakes as generative of my own life and my own life’s story.

I accept death as inevitable.

I accept the lack of preparation and the culture of denial.

I accept reality as it is and what I have to work with in this physical realm.

I accept the whole experience of my family of origin as a weird, painful, confusing, wrong, wild, rich, terrible amalgamation of choices and consequences I will never understand but that I function out of.

vows

Just like I can take a vow as an intention, like “Buddha’s way is unsurpassable–I vow to become it,” I accept human nature as a beautiful intention.

For one moment, I can practice accepting human nature. The next moment I might fail to accept it. But if I string enough moments together, maybe my heart can change.

How does change happen? Sometimes it’s a landslide or binary. Sometimes it’s one bite at a time.