Someone who I had just met but was a relative of someone I know, recently asked me, “Have you accepted it?”.
I was taken aback, and I am NEVER taken aback.
I quickly confirmed the reference was to my vision loss, and then I replied, simply, with the complete opposite of simple behind the word, “No”.
I have been asking myself what the true answer to the question is ever since. I looked up the definition of acceptance, and was going to include it here, but changed my mind. This is about what I think acceptance is, not Merriam, not Webster.
My answer should have been this, “I’ve accepted it because I don’t have a choice, but that doesn’t make it any easier. If you’re lucky, you get better at it.”
It isn’t important that I didn’t know how to answer this person who asked, but it is important that I know how to answer it to myself. And, this time, I wasn’t taken aback at all.