“…At this time.” So much to learn from adjusting to the moment. Patience comes from accepting that change is inevitable.
— Shaka Brown (@shakabrown) September 13, 2014
Acceptance is a constant theme for me. I’m very much a person that wants what I want, when I want it, and will bulldoze over the little details like “reality” when it comes to trying to get it.
I have been trying to be good about the dates, and present things in order, but I honestly just can’t remember what day things happened exactly. I do know that I went through a change between November 14th when I walked into Jackson Memorial, and my 37th birthday. There are stories related to the change, but I want to focus on the change itself before I go into the stories. It makes the stories just make more sense. So what happened?
First, I had a connection with myself. It told me that I needed to deal with this issue of being in the hospital. It was mainly brought about by the hospital doing their thing in keeping me alive. I was ready to fight the pain and give blood. I was ready to fight. There had to be a fight in everything. The fights kept getting harder, and I kept fighting harder. If you want to see someone that will not give up, then you’re looking at me.
Then I had a connection with my Self. The first connection was the easy part. The second is the part that has left me, as my good buddy Hershon says, in a State of Grace. There was a connection that said to stop fighting to save yourself. Stop fighting to save your career. Stop fighting to prove that you are strong. Stop fighting.
Start accepting.
Acceptance is hard for me. I’m used to being the exception, not the acceptor. I see what I want and I go for it. If I come across something I don’t want, I reject it. I can only imagine the hell I put people through in dealing with me. Just about every relationship I’ve had has been bipolar. I swung between financial success because that’s what I wanted, to financial ruin because I stopped caring. I lost contact with people that genuinely cared about me, and was willing to let them go, because they showed that they could care about something else more. I was all about passive vengeance. I was damned good at it too. I’m damned good at just about everything that I set my mind to. Because everything is about mindset.
I had a moment, several moments in fact, that I absorbed that lesson. It’s ALL about mindset. If your head is in the right place, the world is your oyster. If it’s in the wrong place, then every day can feel like you have to prepare for a fight.
Had this lesson not happened to me, I would not be writing this today. I fought everyone about coming to the doctor, It wasn’t a matter of “I didn’t listen”, it was a matter of I created logical arguments against trained medical professionals as to why I didn’t need to go to get medical care. I was a skeleton walking down the street saying he was OK, finding pleasure in proving people wrong. All of that desire to prove myself right despite anything melted away in me one night. I had a rebirth, right around my birthday.
When the nurse walked in and wished me happy birthday, I hadn’t even realized the date. I just knew that I had been reborn. When the cleaning staff passed by and asked how I was doing, I told her that I felt great, and it was my birthday.
“I’m sorry you have to have to spend your birthday in the hospital”
“If I didn’t make it to the hospital I might not have had a birthday”