Spirituality 04 Mar 2007 10:20 am
Paradox
There is an interesting paradox that I have been thinking a lot about lately. It’s one that I’ve been exposed to in many different spheres - personal growth, social activism, and organizational dynamics. It’s the paradox that it’s necessary to hold two apparently opposing views about a difficult situation: a deep and complete acceptance that a situation exists as it is in the present moment, as well as a passion to change it.
Often times, especially in activist circles, "accept" feels like "condone." If we accept that, for instance, innocent people are being killed in Iraq today by the US, isn’t that condoning it? But, acceptance of something is totally possible without condoning something. We have no real choice but to accept that this is happening now, or that people don’t have what they need to survive, or that we’re in environmental peril. It doesn’t mean we are codoning it - it just means that we deeply know they are happening, and accept that it is happening now.
And the passion for change - I’ve found that, in many personal situations, the way to change something comes from acceptance. Once I fully accept a situation for how it is, the way to change it becomes much more apparent to me, than when I just wanted it to go away.
Wanting a situation to go away is neither accepting it, nor, really, a passion to change it. It’s a kind of magical wishful thinking, that, in my experience, doesn’t really get anywhere, and, in a Buddhist paradigm, leads to suffering.
Paradoxes have always been of interest to me, because I think it is within paradoxes that we often find truth. This is another one of them.