Radically Accepting Life- One Day at a Time
By: Kiana Blake-Chung
I came back to work from my three-week birthday/ holiday vacation and was greeted by a coworker with a very cheerful “How’s 30 feeling?!” to which I responded: “It’s feeling like 31’s not happening!”
The day before, I’d gotten daunting news that will affect my housing security at some point, whether in 6 months, a year, or two. The annoyance was profound because I had *just* decided that it would be safe to mail more of my belongings from Georgia to my apartment because I’d found a place I loved and would be able to afford staying in for the next ten years or so.
I took the news remarkably well, all things considered. I likely would have gone off the deep end that very day if I hadn't ~just~ read a passage from the book I’ve been reading for over a month now on the topic of self-sabotage earlier in the day while I was waiting for the next flight because I’d missed the previous one.
Self Portrait, 30th Birthday vacation 2023.
The book, Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine has illuminated the ways in which I self-sabotage. The revelations I’ve been having deserve an entire post on their own. (I also have belatedly realized the entire book is repackaged Dialectical Behavior Therapy.)
What I’d just read in that chapter was that the universal saboteur is something Chamine calls our “Judge.” Not only do we judge ourselves and others unfairly, but we prematurely judge our circumstances. In the chapter he shares a Chinese parable of a farmer who accepts everything as it comes, saying “Who can tell what’s good or bad?”
When he wins a prize he doesn’t declare it a good thing. Later when he gets robbed because the prize caught the attention of criminals, he accepts that as well. When his son breaks a leg he doesn’t declare it a bad thing. Then war breaks out and while other young men are drafted, his son is spared because of his broken leg. The lesson is that in the grand scheme of life, things that appear negative can, in time, reveal benefits we initially wouldn’t have suspected, and vice-versa. In that way, neutrally accepting everything as it happens helps us to refrain from pre-emptive judgments that would cause us distress.
This parable was fresh in my mind on January 2nd and I remained fairly neutral about the situation (before eventually breaking down in the middle of the night). In the light of morning, I once again decided not to stress over things outside of my control.
The Daylio app is great for mood tracking.
I realized in January that a lot of my suffering is caused by thinking of my life as a long burden to endure.
When I watched the Color Purple (twice), I couldn’t help but notice how Celie’s life absolutely sucked ASS for damn near 40 years straight. Envisioning my life stretching on for that long without a break makes me crazy. (A break to me meaning a significant amount of time of happiness or even neutrality.) I suppose 2020 and 2021 were my break, and those happened fairly recently, so I should just be content and bunker down. Prior to, my most recent break had been my four years of high school.
I didn’t realize that the Chinese parable was an example of radical acceptance until a couple weeks later when another financial crisis hit my household but this time I was fully calm.
If you recall, I mentioned in an Instagram post that I promised myself that 29 was my last year being miserable and that I’d grant myself peace if life didn’t get any better.
I noticed in September of last year, when I decided to fully plan my demise and gather my materials, that once I had decided I was going to follow-through on that decision, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of me finally. I’d felt the same way in 2016 before I made my attempt.
In Girl Interrupted Sussana Kaysen mentions that the question of whether or not you’re going to kill yourself can be what plagues you the most and I agree.
This storefront is my exact brand.
Rather than continuing in mental anguish over this decision, I’ve found that radically accepting it as a potential outcome has helped drastically! Things have a way of working out and even when they don’t work out in my immediate favor, it eventually is fine. All these external stressors aren’t bothering me because I’m telling myself that I’ll be okay regardless and worst case scenario, I don’t have to live through continued suffering if I don’t want to!
The good thing is that by learning to radically accept everything that happens without assigning premature judgements to my circumstances, I am able to remind myself of that, no matter what is happening.
January was not the energizing start to a year that I wanted it to be. I barely posted all month and I kind of didn’t even care to. I sought serotonin daily. Not only moment by moment but also in cultivating practices and weaving self-care into my every day to curate a life I enjoy living.
My new Instagram profile picture; captured by Blake Chung.
On the good days, contentment seems within grasp and on the bad days, it may seem backwards, but having death as an option available to me has made me want to die less and is what gets me to the next day. After I’d come up with my plan and prepared in September last year, I felt at peace for the first time all 2023. My desperation only began to grow again as my resolve wavered and I moved the goal further back the timeline to borrow more time. Life seems excruciatingly long when I think of it in stretches and make milestones of reaching certain moments in time. Delighting in each day as if it could be my last has made living a bit more enticing.
So, how’s 30 feeling? If asked today, little over a month in, I’d say freeing. It’s feeling like I’m cultivating a life I’m learning to enjoy day by day, by taking it one day at a time.
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