A man who took great pride in his lawn found himself with a large crop of dandelions. He tried every method he knew to get rid of them. Still they plagued him.
Finally he wrote the Department of Agriculture. He enumerated all the things he had tried and closed his letter with the question, "What shall I do now?"
In due course the reply came, "We suggest you learn to love them."
—Anthony de Mello, SJ in The Song of the Bird

I first heard this story of the dandelions from Marsha Linehan in 2010 at a training in Boston. It was a powerful moment for me and I’ve thought about the wisdom in this tiny meditation many times over the years.

Dr. Linehan has said that the only way out of (emotional) hell is acceptance.

But the concept of radical acceptance (just one of the skills in Dialectical Behavior Therapy) isn't a one-time event but can be a fairly dramatic shift in the way we choose to approach life's challenges.

That's ultimately the dialectic of change and acceptance. There are things we can change and things we cannot.

Like most people who are emotionally sensitive, I still find this particular skill to be both burdensome ("Good grief! That's it! No more accepting today!") and also freeing ("It's okay. Really. I’ll feel better when I accept this.”).

And like the dandelions, I have a choice in lovingly accepting my emotional sensitivity, the many past choices that I regret, painful moments of grief and loss, the cat throwing up on the freshly-washed duvet cover, and what feels like a million other little things that come up every single day or I can continue to struggle with wanting someone else to come into my life and make things better. (No one is coming to save me. I save myself.)

Sometimes there’s peace in acceptance.

What about you? What are you radically accepting today?