Lent Reflections Week 2: Acceptance

My sister lives in southern Spain. She got married a few years ago in Gibraltar. I wasn't there, because I wasn't invited. Now I don't want to give you the wrong impression. She is a lovely person and we have a good relationship. Her and her husband had planned the wedding as a surprise for his mother's birthday. My parents were also going on holiday to visit them at the same time.

Originally I was going to go with them, but at the last minute I decided to accompany my cousin and her children there a month later. In order to keep their plans a secret, my sister did not inform me of them so the first thing I knew about the wedding was when she What's App'd the photos to me after the event.

I was upset. I was angry. Actually, I was more than angry, I was livid. It took me quite a while to come to terms with missing out on her big day.

I have always struggled with the concept of non-attachment, taught in Buddhism and Taoism. If we don't form emotional attachments, how do we care? But when I looked at it in the context of my sister's wedding, it made sense. It wasn't my emotional attachment to my sister that was the problem per se. The problem was my attachment to a particular outcome, to my expectations, and those were created by my ego. My anger and disappointment came from the gap between my expectations and my experience.

When I looked at why I felt hurt and angry I realised that it was my ego that was bruised. My expectations had not been met. I was attached to a particular outcome. I felt entitled to be at my sister's wedding. I judged her actions against all of this.

Once I relinquished my inflated sense of self-importance I was able to let go of my anger and disappointment, by letting go of my expectations and attachment to a particular outcome, and move towards forgiveness, of both of us, and finally into acceptance.

"Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you." Lao Tzu