Saturday, May 6, 2017

Proverbs on Acceptance

May 7, 2017

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. The theme for this week is acceptance.

Today’s poem is a set of ten proverbs on acceptance.

I welcome comments on my poems at https://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

PROVERBS ON ACCEPTANCE

1.     Acceptance is like a calm sea upon which the will can sail smoothly, whereas upon a rebellious sea the will can barely make headway against the wind.
2.     One can accept evil, even one’s own evil, as inseparable from life without surrendering to it, simultaneously embracing those who are evil and vigorously opposing them.
3.     Acceptance of desire – that is, feeling it vividly with neither guilt nor shame – paradoxically frees one from it, so that one need no longer surrender to it or struggle against it, but can simply act according to reason and love.
4.     Acceptance of oneself is like becoming one’s own parent, loving oneself unconditionally while attempting to guide one’s way.
5.     One can either dance across a rock-strewn field or curse the rocks as one stumbles and weaves. To the rocks it is all the same.
6.     One of the least satisfactory things one can do is wish one were doing something else.
7.     One ought not worry about getting what one wants, but rather about wanting what one gets.
8.     The secret of happiness is simple – if one is alive and not in pain, one is happy. But only if one knows it.
9.     The quality of one’s life is determined more by attitude than by altitude.
10.  Acceptance is not acquiescence. What is surrendered is not the will but the heart.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at https://www.poemsforfree.com/provac.html. For more philosophical poems, go to https://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html .

This week’s theme: Acceptance
May 5: Forty-Seven3
May 6: Forty-Three3
May 7: Proverbs on Acceptance

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