The End of the World

What if it really was the end of the world? That planet-obliterating meteor is hurtling toward us and we have three weeks to live, then just one. How would you spend your time? Trying all the altered states you’ve never let yourself try before? Rioting and looting? Desperately trying to reconnect to family or some long-lost love? Frantically, anxiously trying to prevent the inevitable? Mowing the lawn?

I like to think that I’d choose to be with someone with whom I can make an authentic connection, just doing every-day stuff: cooking a meal, listening to music, hanging at the beach. I like to think that I’d choose to be with someone with whom I could be 110% in the moment, just present and aware of myself and that other person, without stress or worry. Someone to whom I could say, in the last 60 seconds of our lives, “Tell me about your childhood,” listening with complete attention to the answer. 

That kind of peace may be the final result of Acceptance, my greatest challenge among the 7 Childhood Treasures. Acceptance: the Buddhism of early childhood.

After we have the chance to learn the arts of Negotiation as four-year-olds and Compromise as six-year-olds, we are offered this awesome opportunity at the tender age of seven years: learn how to accept that sometimes:

• You have no ability to influence something that affects you
• Others’ poor choices can hurt you, even though you made wiser choices
• The world is not fair
• Even people who are kind and generous most of the time can disappoint you with what seems to be unkindness
• You can’t always have what you want, or even what you are sure you need
• Best intentions fail to deliver
• You will make “mistakes” (ie., choose actions that have unpredicted, unpleasant consequences)

What we do with these realities is a central question for life; one of the key lessons to learn before we go on to whatever is next. Do you fret and stew in anger when such is your experience? Do you rage against the tide you cannot stem? Do you lie down in anguish and defeat and let the storms of life pound you? Do you tear apart every painful experience, looking for who’s to blame, or for the source of a solution? Do you wrestle in hindsight with every demon, living always in past regret, or in the fantasy of “what might have been”?

I have chosen all these options at various times in my life. They have all proven fruitless at worst, disappointing at best. 

Here’s what I want to do: relax, accept what is. I want to say “Yes” to these challenging experiences, just as I say yes to what I have always found pleasurable in life. I even want that “Yes” to be a doorway to finding pleasure in these “painful” experiences. Can I simply shift my perspective?

I remember something a woman said to me as I drove her to the airport from a seminar we had both attended. Explaining her life philosophy (and her calm response to a major disruption in her travel plans), she said,  “I open my two hands,” as she cupped them before her, “and whatever life puts there, I take.” This stranger from Turkey went home that day, after spending a few weeks in the U.S.. The following week, on August 17, 1999, there was a 7.2 earthquake in her home city of Ankara. One of the strongest quakes ever in that region, it killed more than 17,000. Three more quakes hit the region soon after, in September and October that year and in January of 2000.

I have thought of this stranger and her philosophy often in the past decade-plus. At first, it was with some pissy skepticism: I wonder how she is taking what life has put in her hands now? Soon, I felt more kindness, hoping she and her loved ones had survived. 

This stranger from a car ride has never left my mind and I have always noticed when Ankara was mentioned in the news. Turkey cleared the rubble and, eventually, rebuilt. 

Then, in October 2011, a 7.2 quake hit the region.

Here is what Acceptance really is: the ability to embrace the motto This Too Shall Pass. In the good times, be humble and know that you don't get all the credit. Accept the good, the bounty, the love, the health, the strength, and be grateful for it all. In the tough times, be humble and know that you are not alone in facing challenges. Accept the loss, the anger, the injury, the dis-ease in whatever form, and be grateful for it all. There are lessons in the grace and lessons in the challenges. There are gifts of growth in both, as well.

Even when it seems to be, or really is, the end of the world, cup your two hands before you in acceptance of what life puts there. Use it. Take it, like modeling clay, and add it onto the sculpture of the living, expanding being that you are.