One Word War

Nouns annoy me. I want to kick them. Make them dance. Stand up for themselves. Demand they not just lie around like lazy bums. I live in a land of verbs. The more active the better. Doing beats being. Running trumps walking. Passive is painful.

Surrender is the pre-curser to personal paralysis. A red flag that conformity and compliance are at play and odds are high I’ll be required to crucify some piece of myself to keep the peace. Dramatic? Maybe. Giving up just feels counterintuitive to progress.

No one needs you to surrender when things are going well. You don’t have to surrender your company id badge when you get a promotion. No need to surrender your confidence when you win an Olympic gold medal or get a publishing contract or run five miles.

Surrender, however sad and given up it may be, is small potatoes compared to its diabolical and deadly inbred cousin: acceptance.

I’ve been at war with acceptance since Mrs. Hubel gave Suzy Harrigan my part in our kindergarten re-enactment of Humpty Dumpty. I couldn’t very well confront my teacher, so I hit Suzy over the head with a block. Not the best choice but kids who feel cornered act out.

At lunch I went to Mrs. Smith’s house with a bunch of other kids who didn’t live close by. Every week she gave me hot dogs with ketchup despite my repeated request for plain. When I’d ask if I could have one without, she’d lick off the ketchup and hand it back to me. So, I stuffed them all in the bottom of the toy chest. Eventually she found out and I was forbidden to go back.

Recess was no relief. The kids chanted Kelly smelly with a big fat belly that’s full of jelly from the top of the jungle gym. I’d argue that I wasn’t smelly and didn’t even like jelly. They’d laugh. I’d leave. Eventually, I gave up. Accepted this reality despite it not being mine.

I was pudgy but attractive. Introverted but personable. As a producer from L.A., my dad saw potential. And so began the pretty and popular initiative. He made me run three miles with him every morning. Silenced my crying with encouragement. Hid the cookies after I devoured a sleeve of fig newtons. Asked if I really wanted that second bowl of ice cream at my sister’s birthday party.

Truth was, I didn’t. I wanted the whole gallon. So, I ate it after everyone went to bed. His weight loss crusade was a catastrophe. You can’t extinguish a forest fire with a water gun. Friends were futile. Fat was forever. So, I threw myself into school.

In first grade I got an A back on a paper. Maryanne Murray sat next to me. She got an A with the word Excellent underlined. I ran out of class crying. What more I could do. I wanted Mrs. Nardone to my brilliance. Sensitive? Absolutely. Over the top? Not to me.

Thirty years later, acceptance is still my arch nemesis. Jeff Warren throws it out like a life raft in his mindfulness meditations. I try not to roll my eyes. It gets mentioned in family therapy. Last week, I shared a toned-down version of my definition and was encouraged to see it more as a place from which we can pivot into new patterns.

Here’s how I imagine acceptance got its start: A marketing team was told to rebrand resignation. Make it sound more hopeful. Compatible with words like ambition. Some big-wig EVP said, “Call it something calming so people feel good about giving up.” The marketing team likely drank copious amounts of coffee and burned through all their Adderall before epiphany struck– acceptance.

Ten years ago, I worked on Olay. The creative brief was always some version of: Defy your age. Bold rally cry to fight gravity. Not be defined by fine lines. Reimagine wrinkles. Dove was on the other side encouraging women to embrace real beauty. Courageous or complacent. Warrior or pacifist. Dove women were accessible; Olay women aspirational. I wanted both.

Now, I want more. More mornings where I don’t wake up buried beneath the weight of my expectations. Worried I won’t show up as my best me. More late afternoons not fighting my age, weight, anxiety and point of existence. More middle-of-the-nights not problem-solving worst-case scenarios. More peace.

Acceptance keeps showing up uninvited. Winking at me from across the room. Floating out bits of remembered wisdom: What you resist persists. Admission is the price of admission. You can’t get where you’re going if you don’t know where you are. My first instinct is to power-eat roasted cashews or salt and vinegar potato chips or both. This strategy is not currently crushing it for me, so I am considering a radical question.

What if instead of being a dead-end that leads to despair, acceptance is a bridge into becoming?