[9] I accepted the future
The heart of the suggested steps to Peace & Acceptance is contained in these steps describing the experience of grieving widows and widowers.
Meetings focus on working through the steps, often in a repeating pattern as more learning is revealed to us on our journey. There is often no linear progression.
Acceptance of the future means stopping the fight. It means accepting that our future is going to be very different from our envisioned future, from the future that we thought we were going to have.
Tension in our lives arises when we compare.
Tension arises when we compare our envisioned future with the reality of our future. There’s a gap betwen the 2.
And in fact, tension can arise again when we start to project an envisioned future once more.
So this is about acceptance of our future and that it will be different to the way we thought it was going to be.
And actually it’s realistically going to be different again to what we think – no one knows, but we make stories in our head and we tell ourselves that those stories are true.
Acceptance of our future means to stop fighting with that gap between our envisioned future and the way it is actually going to be.
Ultimately acceptance of our future is allowing our future to be whatever it is going to be, no story, no predictions, it just IS THE WAY IT WILL BE.
Thinking prompts for this step
If you wish you may find it helpful to use these as prompts to guide your thinking when it’s your turn to share during any group meeting.
- Thinking back to the past, what story did you tell yourself about the future?
- What stories have you told yourself about the future again?
- Are you still fighting with that gap?