Acceptance

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Dane Allred’s Partly-colored Dreamcoat

Acceptance

It’s easy to be happy. We just have to be satisfied with what we have, and grateful for everything else we get. It’s a strange concept in our consumer society which teaches acquisition is the only way to happiness. I don’t think it is a bad thing to be a consumer; I just wonder if you really do need that thing you really, really want to buy.

When we were in college, my wife and I lived in a tiny apartment. The house we live in now would hold eight or ten of those small boxes. It really was just a small front room with a smaller kitchen attached; a bathroom and a tiny bedroom.

But we were happy to have rooms to share, and some of our best memories of early marriage were in that place. This place was so small it took a tiny refrigerated window air-conditioner to cool the whole place. It had such bad insulation the windows would ice up every winter, and were talking up to inches of ice on the inside of the window. The tile floors were cold, the bathroom miniscule, the kitchen even smaller.

We had to climb a set of stairs to get to the second floor, so we didn’t have to listen to people upstairs like the downstairs people had to. They used to complain about the noise we would make, but we were polite enough not to complain about the incredibly strong curry smell which wafted up from downstairs.

I still don’t like curry.

But when I think back to those good old bad old days, it’s funny to compare the luxury I am surrounded by today. Compared to our tiny college apartment, our house is huge. We have a huge yard. We drive more dependable cars, enjoy better food and have lots more disposable income. Are we proportionately happier?

I’m going to argue we really can be happy wherever we are, and whatever we are doing. It’s not just a measurement of living space, but the actuality of our life. It has been called self-fulfillment, or maybe self-actualization. Abraham Maslow described it by saying what a person can be, they must be, calling this need is self-actualization. It’s also a desire to be what we are potentially. He also said:

“This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.”

If you are self-actualized you have a realistic perception of yourself, others and the world around you. You are also accepting. A self-actualized person is concerned with helping find solutions, often motivated by a sense of personal responsibility and ethics. If you are spontaneous, open and unconventional, you may be becoming the person you can be and must be.

A self-actualized person can also conform to rules and social expectations. While you enjoy the company of others, you probably also need independence and privacy to have the time to focus on developing your own individual potential.

This next quality may sound familiar. Self-actualized people have a continued sense of appreciation, viewing the world with awe and wonder. They experience fresh inspiration and pleasure with even simple experiences. They also have peak experiences or moments of intense joy, wonder, awe and ecstasy. These peak experiences leave self-actualized people feeling inspired, strengthened, renewed or transformed.

Does this sound like you?

Are you having peak experiences? Do you have a sense of appreciation, wonder and awe? I hope you are becoming more of what you are, what you must be. Are you spontaneous and unconventional? Do you want to solve the problems of others, or the problems of the world? I hope you are developing your own potential.

The world needs self-actualized people; those who are self-fulfilled. Those who dream of a better tomorrow and are finding ways to make that happen. Those people who know what they want to be, what they have to be, and are ready to see problems with a fresh eye and new perspective. The world is looking for these people to not only feel inspired, strengthened, renewed or transformed, but to also help others feel this in their lives, too.

It really is a tremendous feeling to be self-actualized, and I only wish I felt this way more often. But the good news is I am feeling self-fulfilled more often now. But it’s not because of my house, my job, my income or even that I am performing more than ever and feel ever more creative.

But saying I am self-actualized means I am probably not. It is an interesting contradiction.

But I do know even when I lived in a tiny place I was doing what I wanted. I still am. I hope you are too.