Acceptance. A word I learned to hate before understanding it. For years I thought it meant “giving up,” “submitting,” “being passive.” But I was wrong. Completely.
The confusion about acceptance
Acceptance is often associated only with difficult situations: grief, trauma, loss. As if it were the last resort when everything else fails. As if accepting meant admitting defeat.
But acceptance is not surrender. It’s strategy.
It’s one of the last concepts I’ve learned, and perhaps I’m still learning to understand and make it mine. I’m realizing on a human level that accepting, then being aware, and if possible also meta-aware, helps so much to feel serene.
Acceptance in trauma: the Tetris case
Apparently unrelated note but scientifically proven: if you suffer trauma, play Tetris immediately after.
Studies show that the game blocks the formation of traumatic visual memories. The brain, busy rotating blocks and finding fits, doesn’t have resources to fix traumatic images in long-term memory.
It doesn’t solve the trauma. It doesn’t replace therapy, support, or process. But it softens the first impact, the most violent one. Then you need everything else we know: professional help, time, processing.
But at first, Tetris helps. Scientifically, unquestionably.
Why? Because it accepts the trauma instead of fighting it head-on, and engages the mind constructively. It doesn’t deny. It doesn’t repress. It accepts and redirects.
Accepting vs Submitting: the key distinction
And here’s the heart of everything: accepting is NOT submitting.
Submitting is passivity. It’s powerlessness. It’s victimhood. It’s letting things happen without response.
Accepting is active awareness. It’s saying: “This is reality. I don’t like it, but this is how it is. Now, what can I do starting from here?”
If we fight a concept, a situation, a reality we cannot change, we only generate anger, nervousness, and frustration. We damage our time, we degrade it.
But if we accept what is beyond our control, we free energy to act on what we can change.
Serenity, not happiness
And here’s a fundamental distinction I’ve learned: acceptance brings serenity, not happiness.
Happiness is a peak. It’s high emotion, intense, unstable. It rises and falls. It depends on external events. It’s beautiful, but ephemeral.
Serenity is foundation. It’s a lasting state, solid, internal. It doesn’t depend on what happens outside, but on how you are inside.
Day after day I appreciate serenity more and more. Because happiness comes and goes, like waves. Serenity, if you accept, remains like the seabed.
And I specify: serenity, not happiness. Because acceptance doesn’t make you euphoric. It makes you stable.
Acceptance and time
Think about last time’s theme: time.
If we fight physical time trying to stop it or go back, we only create frustration. If we transfer it to biological time by forcing objectively wrong behaviors, extreme diets, age denial, obsessive interventions, we make everything worse.
But if we accept that physical and biological time advance, and we concentrate on what we can shape, perceptual time, the mind, ourselves, everything changes.
We arrive at serenity.
Concrete, personal example: I’m 43 years old. I can fight it, deny it, obsessively force the biological. Or I can accept it and work on mind, awareness, perception.
Result? “Wait, you’re 43? I would have given you at least 6 less.”
Not because I lie about my age. Not because I use tricks. But because the serenity of acceptance shows. It reflects in the body, in expression, in energy.
Acceptance in practice
Now let’s think about this concept applied to other themes, especially those complex on a personal or emotional level.
If we insist on fighting situations we cannot control, we only and solely create problems for ourselves first and foremost.
I can’t give overly specific examples, but I know it well. But the principle is universal: if we shift from fighting to accepting that situation, and I emphasize accepting, not submitting, we become aware of everything.
And awareness, perhaps even meta-awareness, provides us serenity. And makes us act with serenity.
The paradox of acceptance
And here’s the most fascinating paradox: often, when you stop fighting and accept, you get exactly what you wanted to obtain by fighting.
Example: a relationship that’s changing. You can fight the change, cling to how it was before, generate conflict and tension. Or you can accept that people evolve, that dynamics transform.
Not passively submit. But consciously accept.
And often, not always, but often, the other person sees your serenity, understands it, and responds in ways you would never have obtained through struggle. Perhaps they give you, indirectly, the answer to what you wanted to say but didn’t, because you accepted instead of imposing.
It’s not magic. It’s human dynamics. Serenity disarms. Struggle hardens.
Conclusion
Accepting is not surrendering.
Accepting is stopping fighting what you cannot change, to concentrate energy on what you can.
And this, paradoxically, gives you more power than you would have by fighting.
Serenity. Awareness. Action.
In that order.