Acceptance is the answer ......
 

I love this paragraph from one of the stories. I could not stay sober until I accepted my alcoholism.

"Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake." - Now that I know this, life takes on a whole new meaning.

I admitted i was an alcoholic in the bars, to family and friends...the first time i said i was an alcoholic was at 20...i couldn't get sober until i accepted it.

Acceptance in sobriety causes me less pain, in fact when i do truly accept i feel no pain. It is a practical learning experience for me in sobriety, like getting an electric shock and being able to determine how long the shock lasts...only able to shorten, hopefully one day eliminate, the pain by working the steps and having a close contact with God.

Well, this thread has been sitting here long enough without a response.
I'll go.
There's just some things that are unacceptable. Like my drinking and all the ill effects of the malady.
So let me toss a wrench into the machine.
So I've gotten myself into a situation I can no longer accept.
"Life on Life's Terms" indicates that I'm an alcoholic and alcoholics drink.
As an alcoholic I've managed to paint myself into a corner where I'm surrounded by people that take issue wth me.
Do I "accept" them and keep drinking?

OK, No I don't. I quit drinking and clean up my act.

What about the past and all the damage I've done?
Do I accept it? Or do I clean house and make amends?

One of my biggest fears when I was drinking was that I would either get sober some day or die from alcoholism.
But to get sober I had to find God first. I had brief introductions to AA from time totime all through the 80s and 90s and they all said I had to find God.
Unacceptable once again. I knew enough about God to scare the **** out of me. I wasn't afraid of God. I was afraid of being of the mentality that I had to keep turning the other cheek. Milktoast, wearing rose colored glasses! That's not me and I didn't want to become that person. I had to find the dividing line between the acceptable and the unacceptable. I also had to do so without giving up my right to assert myself.
As a "Recovered" alcoholic I still have rights to my emotions. I'm still allowed to get angry. It's how I act on my emotions that make all the difference in dealing with the unacceptable.
Cudas will and Gods will need to jive here. We need to deal with situations as God would have us. Otherwise impulse takes over and we become the dreaded "Dry Drunk"
It's just like a real life Goofus and Gallant from the magazines.
Anyways, as usual this is just my opinion and not to be taken as actual fact. I'm just typing away and got on a tangent. I'm really supposed to be shampooing carpets.

I agree with Pinkcuda.

For me, these things will never BECOME acceptable:

cruelty.
to children, women, animals, nature...
and I will never seek to make it acceptable.

For me 'acceptance' wasn't about the world...
from a perspective of a participant.
Meaning from the inside3... trying to cope.

For me -
way out here in left field -

I had to learn to let the universe...
unfold as it's meant to.

It meant I was to stop
trying to out think the world.
I had to learn to let life happen
without my manipulating it to my advantage.
or manipulating it
to keep my secrets hidden.

So for me -
acceptance wasn't about
'hey- blue pants brown shirt'
'hey-that's okay- kind of stuff....

it was far deeper than that.


I hope that makes sense.

Hmm i can say that i find things unacceptable until i am blue in the face but the fact is that things did or do happen and will continue to do so, so i have to accept that and then i can take action or not...

Something comes up the quicker i accept it, the quicker i can do something about it or not...i can sit there all day over coffee saying how unacceptable it is...won't change a thing for me or anyone else...

Pink one of your examples, i had to accept the past before clearing the wreckage...i spent a load of my time not accepting things and finding them unacceptable, consoling myself with the fact that yes i do find that unacceptable and i'm sure won't do it again, which gave me carte blanche to do nothing about them...

Barb the things you outlined are completely unacceptable to me too, but i do accept that they happen...alot more than most people realise...if more people accepted they do happen then they may not get swept under the rug so readily...

Maybe ive got a different view on what acceptance means, it doesn't mean just accepting something then going merrily on my way with a smile on my face and i don't think that is what the passage means either...acceptance is a prelude to action or no action...to me anyway!

I'm sure someone could pick the bones out of that and re-word it to make more sense!

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change

I cannot change that I am an alcoholic. I cannot become not an alcoholic. I cannot change the past. I cannot go back in time and undo the things I did when I was living the life of untreated alcoholism. People across the globe who I do not even know have done things and will continue to do things which I do not agree with, things I do not like, things I would never do. I cannot, even by trying really, really hard, make them stop doing them. There are so many things I cannot change that I could easily become discouraged to the point of doing nothing to change anything.

the courage to change the things I can

I do not have to suffer from alcoholism. I can recover. I do not have to live completely and forever in the wreckage of my past. I can make the effort to clean up that wreckage and even though that effort does not erase the past, it does change the present and it does change me. I can stop using the wrong thoughts and the wrong actions of others to justify my own wrong thoughts and wrong actions. I can continue to do the next right thing and know that it will have a positive effect even if I cannot see the immediate result.

and the wisdom to know the difference

Wisdom comes through experience. Sometimes I have to try to change things which I cannot change to find the difference. Also, there are a great many things which I could change but should not. How do I find this difference? I need the eleventh step on daily basis and I need to check myself pretty carefully when I start to believe that I know God's will for other people.

The courage to change the things that I can...

Acceptance in no way implies helplessness.

I don't look at particular incidents as being the point of the quote. Nothing happens by mistake. If I hadn't experienced the unacceptable, I'd never know what is acceptable. Me being an alcoholic, doing, saying and thinking all the things that come along with the malady taught me my actions were unacceptable and that's what I focus on accepting. God doesn't make mistakes. Could God have jumped in and prevented me from experiencing all those terrible things that happened? Of course!! But He didn't! In order for me to be where I'm at now, I had to experience all those things. Similar to the crucifixion and reserection of Jesus. God could have prevented all that from happening but He didn't. The impact wouldn't have been the same. In a manner of speaking, I was crucified by alcohol and reserected by AA. Nothing happens in God's world by mistake. That's what I accept.

What it took for me to finally sit down, look at and within myself, and get real.

great post!

the serinity prayers seems a little flawed to me (omg big suprise right) lol

It seems to me that I do better wtih should...

I need to accept the things I should, change the things I should....

So often there are things I can change, but life is best served if I dont...I need to learn how to differenciate what I should change from what i should just leave alone...

...And the wisdom to know the difference.

A biggie for me too.
Struggling against what ought to be accepted, or throwing my hands in the air accepting what ought to be changed.. probably most the chaos and troubles in my life would fall under those misguided attempts to run the show by self will alone.

This part actually sounds like it came from Kabbalahism:

"It is written that “there is none else beside Him,” meaning that there is no other power in the world with the ability to do anything against Him. And what man sees, namely, that there are things in the world, which deny the household of above, is because He wills it so. In other words, there is one power, there is one active force, there is one actor in reality. There is no other authority, there is no other author to anything that occurs in reality, but the fact that we see that the world is built in such a way that there seems to be an opposing force, well this is done on purpose and it’s for our benefit."

(from a book called Shamati)