I am working on accepting the world as it really is. And that is hard because I am human. And the “world” is a model in my head based on the patterns and filters through which I see it.

I have been wondering whether “appreciation” of something is the next level to accepting something. I have been pondering about it since watching the movie “Wisdom of Trauma” that I wrote about a few days ago.

If one truly accepts anything as they are, then that acceptance would include those that we label “negatively” too. Trauma also being one of them. If that is so, then one would have to appreciate it the same way as one appreciates something we label as a “positive”. Wouldn’t that be true?

I am not suggesting here that one appreciates the negative in a foolish way as the context of the situation matters. There are things that one can’t appreciate at all - things that should not be condoned, no matter what. Especially acts that are deliberate in nature that harms someone in any way. However for the rest of it, however, hard things might be, there is a possibility to look at it from the lens of appreciation and see what one can do with it, in that situation. To even build upon the “negative” to make things better…

Appreciate the accepted.