After sharing an essay on my battle with a chronic pain condition, I was on a Facebook group for women who share the same diagnosis. One of the members posted some advice she recently received from her psychologist, a specialist in chronic pain, regarding acceptance:

“She [psychologist] suggested I come to terms with, and be okay with, the fact that my pain may never get better. In other words to know that life might always be like this and make peace with it.”

To say this suggestion elicited a strong reaction in the Facebook group is an understatement. Some 50-odd comments later, it was clear the line between “acceptance” and “giving up” is a very blurry one.

Regardless of whether you deal with a formally diagnosed illness or not, all of us live with chronic pain. It is the condition called life. To hear that we are to “accept” pain is a hard pill to swallow. But as I have thought more about the topic of acceptance and my initial knee-jerk reaction to it, I realized I needed to meditate on and unravel my misconceptions about it

Recently, I sat at my kitchen table and tried to stave off a mini panic attack. My house was a disaster, I was hurting, and the future in several major areas of our lives was up in the air. Everything felt uncertain, and I prefer things firmly nailed down, like a coffin. As my glazed stare came back into focus over my by-then-cold coffee, I noticed I had been staring at my patio table, covered in a pool of raindrops. In the middle of it, glistening, sat a few seashells left over from our trip to Sarasota last summer. Life seemed so perfect the day we plucked them from the sand. Now, those remnants of summer bliss are soaked. And it struck me that this is the problem I have with acceptance. The problem is that I had been defining it as viewing life as if someone was going to hit pause on my circumstances just as they are right now -a pre-panic attack.

I became aware that I have exchanged the true meaning of acceptance for the definition of giving up. I don’t think I am alone in this confusion of terms. Even the wisdom of my friend’s psychologist echoes an element of the confusion, “…To know that life might always be like this.” The subtle fallacy here is that I had believed that if I am to accept something, I must accept it as it is right now forever, and when things are bad, that is not a comforting thought. If I hurt now, if my bank account is low now, if my dreams are dying now – then acceptance means that I have decided to be “okay” with those realities permanently. But that isn’t the definition of acceptance; that is the definition of giving up.

If I had read the Facebook thread at the beach in Sarasota right after collecting my now rather depressing-looking shells, my confused understanding of the meaning of acceptance would have been much more palatable. I would be fine accepting a static state of life where I sit on a beach with nothing to do but decide which restaurant to dine in that evening. At that moment, all my life stretched out before me like the horizon I gazed upon. Sunny skies from here on out. Even the darkness glistened with stars. Of course, I didn’t notice the tiny cloud in the distance that was moving fast toward me. A cloud that would, within 2 hours, lead to a torrential downpour that flooded our hotel room. That is the problem with defining acceptance (good or bad) as a permanent state of being.

True acceptance is about the present. Acceptance is about being in the only moment I have – this one. In this moment I may have to accept pain, a few moments later I may be asked to accept peace, even pleasure. If I view acceptance as giving up, it is an arrogant admission that I believe that I can fortune tell and confirm that my current experience, be it bleak or bright, is static- that all moments hereafter are going to be beach days or dreary afternoons. Acceptance correctly defined opens us up to hope that the future has so many more options than those two- I can experience the mingling of pain and peace together.

When I live in a place of acceptance of where I am in this moment, I can keep my balance on the tightrope of the past, the present, and the future. When I move into the realm of “giving up,” I dive head-first into a crystal ball, crash into the opaque surface, and slide down the side into despair. Let’s not do that.