I recently accused someone of being moody and mean a lot and was told that I’m not accepting who they are. I’m not letting them be themselves (don’t worry, they’re unlikely to read this – too busy being mean).
It got me thinking about acceptance. It seems to me there’s a lot of confusion these days over what’s acceptable and what’s not. We’ve all seen those Facebook posts, right? The ones that say something like, “Winnie the Pooh and Piglet never left Eeyore out of their adventures just because he was always mopey and down. They didn’t ask him to change or cheer up. They just accepted him for who he was.”
There are certain things that, of course, we should accept about people. I’ll be the first to admit that when I was younger I was a bit homophobic. School is a harsh place to grow up and kids often used homophobic slurs to insult one another.
What changed my view?
Two things. One, a friend of mine told me, after seven years of knowing him, that he was gay. It was the first time something like that had happened to me. Back then, it was still a big deal if somebody came out, it wasn’t very common. (Actually, I’m sure it’s still a big deal for people). I’m a pretty logical guy so I thought about it and I figured, well, we’ve been friends for 7 years. Why should this change anything? Secretly though, although I accepted it I think at the time I still didn’t think it was “natural”. A couple of years later, at university, I was shown a documentary about animals engaging in gay sex. You can’t get much more natural than animals.
So, in short, what happened was I developed as a person. I learnt from my experiences and my education, and I changed my views.
And this brings me back to my earlier point. You see, it’s important to develop as individuals, to improve ourselves and to be kind to each other. This is how the human race moves forwards. It’s not all about technology and industry. And even those things are really about people. It always amazes me that social education is not seen as very important. I didn’t do any social studies until university. And yet your view of the world shapes everything you do in it. Including how you treat others. Surely, this should be at the crux of all education? You can’t just throw in some religious stuff and hope it sticks.
So, it’s not just as simple as saying “you should accept me for who I am”. That’s laziness. It’s an easy out for being stubborn or closed to criticism. For not being honest with yourself. Sure, we all have our moody days and that’s totally fine but it can’t be all the time, and we do sometimes need to accept that we are being moody and later apologise. You got that Eeyore? Sorry actually isn’t the hardest word (for info, it’s Otorhinolaryngologist).
We all have a responsibility to at least try to be better. Like most people, I’m far from perfect. But I do try to see things from other people’s perspectives, even if it’s sometimes REALLY, REALLY HARD.
Treat people as you would like to be treated. It’s really that simple. You don’t have to like everything about other people, I’m not even sure you should. You just have to treat others in a way you’d like to be treated yourself (assuming you’re not a sadomasochist – then you need to have some understanding that most people are not sadomasochistics). Try not to let your issues, habits, or addictions affect others. That’s not cool. And if someone is doing that to you? Well, I think it’s ok to tell them it’s not cool.
We’re all human. But that doesn’t mean most of us aren’t very different. Acceptance is about not allowing yourself to be prejudiced because of a key social or cultural difference. Whether that’s race, gender, sexual orientation or whatever. It’s not about making excuses for behaviour. Good luck out there and as usual, feel free to comment, share, agree or disagree.
A.J. Austin
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