Acceptance/Respect

I've been thinking a lot lately about concepts of acceptance and respect of other people. These are of course concepts heavily relied upon and danced around in therapy circles. Particularly CoDA.

But anyway, it was something that most recently was brought to mind by the lovely Jaime and some comments she made several weeks ago that have been rolling around in my bowling ball head.

In the interim, I've seen a movie and a tv show episode that have also emphasized these ideas. Now you're gonna laugh. Because all of my cool media credibility is going to flush down the toilet when I reveal those two sources. Whatever. Fuck it.

Aside: I say some variation of fuck it, rather a lot. And I have for a long time. I'm cool with this. But when I was about 10 and I had written, directed, and performed in a play with a cast of 8 for my school and there occurred in one of these productions a wardrobe malfunction that I can't quite recall, something about something on my head. Anyway, in my frustration I said "screw it" and removed the offending item and continued with the piece. I was then publicly lambasted by the teacher and then privately assured that I had brought shame to myself, my class, my production, my school, etc etc and had undermined my own achievements. All of this struck me as a massive overreaction. But hey, I was clearly undeterred with regards to my language. So fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it.

Okay, sorry, back to the main point here. So I'm going to lose all coolness and all credibility, but oh well.

So the first one, was a "Gossip Girl" episode, I think it was "The Wrath of Con", but I'm not super sure. Anyway, in the episode, the ever surprising morphing complex beast that is Chuck has a heart to heart with the endearing but simple pretty boy Nate about Blair. Nate is upset that Blair is behaving in certain very Blair-like ways and Nate is complaining.

And Chuck says: "You're wrong. You're wrong for wanting her to be anything other than exactly how she is." In that moment, I thought, that's acceptance, that's love.
I was always annoyed by that musical "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change", which admittedly, I've never seen. But in years in the past I was always trying to change people, boys especially. I think I saw it as making them better. In some instances, I totally understand my compulsion for instance when addiction, criminal behaviour, racism, homophobia, destructive desires came into play. I get that to my mind, I was trying to better these people, help these people. And maybe I was and maybe I did. But I didn't really accept them for who they were did I? Perhaps it would have been healthier to say, you know this is an issue for me and then either accepted them as they were and been content with that or walked away to find a relationship that didn't have that issue in it.

Then of course came the massive backfiring of this course, with Isaac. I tell myself that I couldn't have known. I console myself with the idea that I could not have foreseen that getting him sober and to address his trauma would result in his complete destruction. But maybe I didn't know what I was fucking with and I should have left him alone. Sometimes cruelty is inadvertent.

Anyway, after that, something changed in me. I became traumatized by the idea of trying to make someone else into what I wanted. I started to think that maybe I was the one who needed to change. Getting together with James, who is nothing if not rigid in thought and high in expectation, totally played into that head space. And so, ever since, I've been on that road towards my own self-destruction on the vague premise that it will make someone else happy and that my happiness will flow from theirs.

So, I've learned, it doesn't work that way. Neither you nor I can ever be anything but what we are. We can change, we can learn, we can improve. But it needs to be from the heart and for ourselves, not for someone else. The someone elses in our lives need to accept us as we are, and in turn we must accept everyone else as they are and to respect those differences.

This brings me to the movie. It gets worse. I'm warning you.

So the movie is "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans", which is the 3rd Underworld movie and a prequel to the first two. See, credibility is just bleeding away, isn't it?
Okay, but hear me out. So the movie is part Marxist revolution, part star-crossed love story. And Michael Sheen is excellent. But that's not the point.

So, the chick in this story, Sonja, is sort of princess of the vampire coven, where daddy-o is leader and they run this fiefdom in what appears to be feudalistic medieval England. She is like many such characters, a bit of a brat, who wants to be one of the boys and takes on stupid risks cause its fun and dangerous and what not. Her secret love dude is Lucian, favourite Lycan slave of her dictatorial father. Blah blah, class, blah blah forbidden blah blah, you get the picture.

Anyway, so she does something really stupid by going out against all intelligent thought beyond the walls on a bad night, etc, and essentially gets attacked by the free but uncivilized Lycans and Lucian has to save her, in the process he breaks the rules and ends up imprisoned. Subsequently he escapes then is lured back by a trap set by head vampire dad and then they both get imprisoned. Anyway, it ends badly, shall we say. And there are these sort of parallel scenes early and late in the movie, just before impending death where each of them is sort of like "I'm so stupid, I shouldn't have done that, you're going to die because I made a dumb choice" (I'm paraphrasing) and in turn each of them says "But if you hadn't, then you wouldn't be who you are." And the idea is that they love and accept and respect each other, as is, even with poor decision making skills, and that were they any different than they would not be loved as they are.

And even though it's super corny. I like that. I think that's the way it should be. Accept people as they are. Let them know they are loved as they are. And respect everything that flows from being as they are.

Nothing less should be accepted.