The Ultimate Solution
I may have hinted at the subject of this chapter in many of the previous chapters: it is one of the most fundamental lessons in learning to thrive in a world filled with scrooges and scroogettes. Here is the lesson: difficult people and difficult situations are unavoidable. Here’s the advice: give up and get on with life.
Acceptance (once you get the hang of it) instantly frees you from the frustration associated with difficult people, no matter who they are, whether loved ones or total strangers, and no matter what form their offensiveness takes, whether it be meanness, rudeness, or selfishness.
Acceptance may sound like inaction, but when you try to practice it, you’ll see that it is anything but doing nothing. It sometimes requires more effort than the complaining, confronting, or clamming up you would normally do. But I’m also happy to report that with practice—and once you experience the freedom it brings—acceptance can become almost second nature.
Most of us spend too much time wishing that people would be other than they are. From wishing the barista at the coffee shop would get some people skills first thing in the morning to wondering when the person we sleep with will stop commandeering the blankets in the middle of night, we need to accept that most people just aren’t going to change.
Acceptance is made easier when you realize that the behavior that irritates you isn’t aimed at you (even though you’re the one who wakes up shivering in bed) or indulged in because of you (the barista doesn’t dislike you per se). The behavior is just part of who the other person is—maybe not forever, but at least for right now. Accepting people’s quirks or flaws doesn’t just take changing them off your to-do list—it also gives you the time and energy to change the things you can.
Mark had been a top student in college and earned honors in graduate school as well. He had a prestigious job and seemed to excel at everything he attempted. Mark would probably have said that his greatest frustration in life was that his son was not a good student and showed no interest in higher education. His son simply was not interested in competing in the educational arena in which Mark had excelled.
Mark was hard on his son about this attitude toward school, leading the boy to feel unloved and not accepted for who he was. Mark felt scrooged by his son; his son felt scrooged by his father.
Mark was able to become less demanding when he was forced—after recognizing how futile his frustration was—to entertain the idea of just accepting his son as he was. No one expects cats to fly or lemon trees to sprout oranges, Mark realized, so he slowly stopped being so disappointed. Naturally, his son felt the shift.
I am not suggesting that we accept the unacceptable. But the next time you come face to face with mean or selfish people, try letting them be mean, selfish people. Maybe this cat will one day fly. (And I’m not convinced Mark’s son will never go to college.) But apparently not today. That’s the news. Accept it.