I could never accept anything, you see. This is a problem.
I believe that all human happiness—as far as it can be attained—is predicated in acceptance.
If you could accept everything that ever happened to you then you might not be happy all of the time, but you would at least be content. Because whatever happened, you would just say ‘meh, yeah OK, I accept that. It’s cool’.
This is where those who have religion are fortunate. Because when you are religious, you simply say ‘this is God’s will.’ Whatever occurs, however negative, is God’s will and therefore it was meant to happen.
Like it or not, the dissolution of organised religion over the last two centuries or so has caused a lot of the societal and psychological problems we face today. But to get back on topic, without religion, people have less of a reason to say ‘this was meant to be’.
I in particular have a big problem saying that anything is meant to be. This has been a force for both good and ill in my life.
A lack of acceptance leads to resentment, big time. And there are times when, through lack of acceptance, I become irrationally resentful. Say, for example, I am standing in a London Underground subway car and it hasn’t moved for five minutes. Under my breath I will be muttering ‘get the fuck on with it’. I will be cursing the driver.
Yes, I know that I am not the only person on the train being inconvenienced. And yes, I know that there is probably some rational explanation for the hold up. But I can’t just accept it and wait. I have to work myself up into a frenzy of anger and anxiety, even though this will do me no good and it won’t change the situation one bit.
If you zoom out a bit, the same is true for larger issues in my life. If a girl I am with leaves me for someone else there is no way I am accepting that. I don’t care about looking at it rationally, or seeing her side of things, or being empathetic or any of that bullshit. If she chooses someone else over me then she is dead to me. I will never speak to her again.
I cannot accept slights in a working situation either. If someone comes at me and criticises me in a way that I think unjust then I’m coming at them with both barrels blazing. Seriously. I would rather bankrupt myself with legal fees fighting (and I nearly have, in the past) rather than accept someone’s poor impression of me.
Death, too, I cannot accept. I cannot accept the idea that one day my parents will die. That one day I will die. It makes me unfathomably mad, as though those things will happen to me only and no-one else.
I cannot accept anything. It is incredibly childish. Someone recently called me ‘totalitarian’. I rather liked it.
But the problem is that a lack of acceptance leads to resentment. And resentment, according to the book Alcoholics Anonymous “is the “number one” offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else.”
Resentment is at the root of alcoholism and other addictions because the addict gets so screwed up with impotent rage at whatever has pissed him off this time that he has literally no option but to drink or use. It is no coincidence that the Welsh poet and alcoholic Dylan Thomas wrote this:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Alcoholics and addicts are constitutionally unable to accept the status quo. But neither are writers, poets, dreamers, entrepreneurs and pickup artists.
Pick-up artists are so unwilling to accept what might have been their ‘natural’ status in the sexual hierarchy that they will approach thousands of girls, and in some cases uproot their entire lives, to enjoy as many varied sexual experiences as they can.
Pick-up is at root a ‘fuck you’ to the status quo. The world says ‘here is your place, your looks, your intelligence, your charm. Here are your sexual prospects’. But the pick-up artist does not accept the world’s offer. The pick-up artist would rather suffocate the world with jet fuel travelling to foreign lands for foreign pussy time and time again, than meekly accept his lot.
Alcoholics, pick-up artists, poets, writers, dreamers and entrepreneurs cannot accept anything. Neither can I. And although this trait has caused me untold trouble in my life to date, it has also been the driver for much of my success, and for that I am grateful.
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