Accepting what is. It sounds so simple, doesn't it? Just -- accept. Experience whatever life gives you.

And when life, or the universe, or God -- however you understand it -- gives you something pleasurable, it's easy to accept. A lunch date with a friend: why yes, that sounds grand! An evening with my family: what a treat! An ice cream cone: sure! 

But sometimes we're handed things we didn't ask for, things we don't want. Difficult diagnoses. Postpartum depression. The loss of a job or a loved one. No one wants to accept those. As though in accepting them, we're acceding to them, agreeing to them somehow.

Does it make a difference if one makes a conscious decision to accept whatever comes? Does that give one any kind of agency in the situation? (Is that feeling of agency enough when what comes is difficult or painful?)

Sometimes I get hung up on my expectations. When I develop a sense for what I think is coming, when I write a "script" for an encounter or an experience, and then life doesn't match those expectations, I can get stuck in the disjunction. Thinking that I know what's coming can be a barrier to accepting what is.

As we move into Elul, into this month of teshuvah leading up to the Days of Awe: can I make a spiritual practice of striving to accept whatever life hands me?

Can I accept whatever each day contains while still working to examine and perfect my heart and my soul? I don't want to accept the places where I miss the mark, the places where my relationships or my actions aren't what they should be. Where's the right line between accepting what life holds, and not accepting the places where I could be doing a better job of being the person I mean to be?