Acceptance Over Adjustment…!

Here is the another piece today to munch about. Whatever I place here is all about my own musing; which I have, one time or the other dwelt deep within myself to sort things out when I was cornered dealing with the duality of our nature. Thereupon, I brew an understanding based on the nature of issue at my hand then and how I perceive with it now. Basically, we all know the meaning of literary differences between “Acceptance” and “Adjustment.”

I have noticed one thing, we tend to use those words quiet often, when we talk of a relationship. Webster’s New Word Dictionary defines the meaning of 'Acceptance' as = receiving willingly; of 'Adjustment' as = altering something or someone to make it fit, or settling rightly. Whereas, in my mother tongue Tamil for the former we say “Aerdhup Po” and for the latter is as “Anusharichu Po.” There is a huge difference there in too! I believe we need to understand those two distinguishable words clearly as to run a smooth life within our family structure. We loosely use those words around even when it is coming to our personal relationship.

Let me explain how we can draw a line between those two enlightening words and see them respectively under a different shade. Firstly, let us take the 'adjustment state,' when some one asks to get along with our incompatible friend as we share with him/her a room, it sounds adequately appropriate suggestion to follow.

On the other hand, change the situation and a person there, suggesting you with the same 'adjustment state' of strategy with your spouse. Then the problem arise really within oneself, isn‘t? Why it should work there in one case not in the other? In the first case with our friend (!?), we know, at the end what happens in about so and so month or year, there we hope to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Therefore, momentarily knowing the end result you can run your rest of the co-habitation term in peace with a pretension as if you are in complete harmony with him/her. Knowing that you need not to put up with the same situation once the term is over.

Conversely to that arrangement, if we follow the same ‘adjustment state’ with our loved ones, the relationship is not going to go anywhere but down the hill. Why, because we start faking ourselves having known that we fail to understand the other person’s expectation at its full length or we are presenting ourselves something that we are not truly who we are. So, we start living in duality. Thereby, losing to grasp all the essence whichever emanates out of that relationship; by living in, one in one polarity while the other at the opposite.

All along, the drift is also proportionately widening irrevocably as in the case of continental drift in the ocean. If you really cherish and truly care about the relationship to thrive it for the rest of your life, that state of mind itself would be absent in the first place. Even at the very beginning when it silently tries to sneak in, you will tend to nip it in the bud, wouldn’t you? When you fail it to do so, so with the drift. The ‘adjustment state’ itself does not require much understanding, but just a drop of duality nature of us would do; which causally kicks in when we least aware of our inner ‘self.’

To acquire the “state of Acceptance” needs a lot of self-study and inner growth to assess ones potential and insatiable thirst after knowing the truth. Differences in any human being is indispensable. Basically, that is where we all have a chance to make mistakes and learn a lesson out of it and evolve in mental and spiritual plane. When we learn a lesson, that lesson itself should be taken to our heart level to see through things whichever went wrong, and embrace it as it is one to carry later on into the future. Not even denying a little bit of that essence when we express that part of ourselves, though, now the difference is here we have learnt something out of it and embracing it, as it was part of us once.

By accepting and embracing it, we are not denying our other part but we have integrated into something better with more insight into it. And that very insightful understanding itself goes to act as a basic building block in a relationship to build a more realistic healthy family down the road.

Here is a question to think, how far one can be pushed to accept and learn, based on someone’s unrealistic and ungrounded expectations?