Time for Acceptance

How I came to understand the importance of acceptance and how to do it

I walked into the drama studio and sat down on the floor, waiting for the class to start. I was about 15 at the time, the age at which you so desperately want to be cool but also start to realise the importance of school and the exams that are looming in the very near future, the results of which would have major consequences on the rest of your life. I had never really paid much thought to the concept of acceptance and had no idea that one of the most valuable lessons I would ever learn was about to take place.

We were divided into groups and set a task to work on together to complete within a finite time. As we went about putting into practice whatever thespy theory we had discussed, I looked at the clock.It looked like a clock, it acted like a clock but I could not tell the time. Apparently someone in the year above have given the teacher a backwards clock as a gift. I struggled. Really struggled. I just could not figure out which way the hands were going and the numbers were causing me a degree of distress, despite being clearly printed on.

I spent virtually the entire lesson trying to figure out how to read this bloody clock. Eventually it dawned on me;rather than accepting the clock for what it was, I was trying to force it to meet my expectations of what it should be. The moment I looked at the clock without any preconceptions, it told me the time. That lesson in acceptance has stayed with me ever since, and stuck by me throughout everything; the good times, the bad times and the really awful times. Avoid preconceptions where possible and treat every situation for what it is. In order to understand something, it must first be accepted.