Acceptance Ch. 1 - an introduction

(Noun):

- a disposition to tolerate or accept people or situations; "all people should practice toleration and live together in peace"

- an acceptance of yourself as you are, warts and all.

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Ok, I have to admit that I'm pretty excited about this post.  Reading it could save you literally thousands of dollars in psychiatric bills.  Really.

Sometimes an idea for a blog post comes at the oddest of times.  The idea for this post, for example, came as I sat on the toilet with my broken leg sticking out 90 degrees perpendicular to my body.  An uncomfortable way to poopNow as you can imagine and as I've already written, this is not exactly an ideal position you'd like to find yourself in when taking care of bodily functions.

At the considerable risk of sounding melodramatic, an epiphany struck me there sitting on the toilet with a wad of toilet paper in one hand and my phone in the other furiously typing the notes to this post.  As I sat there, I could have had two, vastly different, reactions to my sorry plight.

My usual reaction would have been to get depressed and think how stupid I was to get into this bizarre position by having had one too many cocktails and falling on my sorry-ass knee.  Woe is me.  I could get angry or sad and wallow in my own misery and reach for a Xanax for the duration of having this cast.

Or......not.

What's wrong with (and this is what happened) a big smile crossing my face and starting to laugh?  If I looked objectively at the situation, it's actually somewhat hysterically funny.  And let's face it, I broke my fucking leg.  It's done.  IT HAPPENED.  Deal with it and move on.

Which of the two reactions makes more sense?  In the first one, no one is happy and in the second one everybody is happy.  (Well, maybe not the person that has to help me get dressed in the morning and make my breakfast, but there are limits to the concept).  The second reaction is: "the key to a happy life".

I'll be writing a bit more in the future about acceptance and why I'm writing about it in a gay blog.  I'll include examples of it's application AND misapplication.  

I would have written it all today in one post, but I want you to come back again.  Plus, I'm mindful in this day and age of shortened twitter/facebook attention spans and that no one reads anything longer than a help wanted advertisement these days (actually, even that last sentence may have been too long).  A future post will be devoted just to this topic.  

Stay tuned.