the importance of acceptance

This post was written earlier this summer, about three weeks before the school year started.

Earlier this week, I was thinking about my behavior. I was thinking about the fact that I never seem to accept compliments and that I seem to have a disconnect between the person that everyone else sees and loves and the person who I feel that I am. It’s not so much that I feel like I am two people, it’s more that I have a separation between the person whom everyone seems to love and the actual me, who can’t seem to feel that love.
“Oh,” it suddenly occurred to me, “I don’t value myself. I don’t consider myself a valuable person.”
It was a hard thing to notice but it was definitely true. I actually don’t value myself. I consider myself somewhat disposable and mostly unworthy of receiving any praise or love. Again, it’s a hard thing to see but I also know that there’s truth in it; it’s definitely how I feel about myself, at least deep down I do. On the surface, and cognitively, I do see that I’m a good person but there’s definitely a gut inclination or history to see myself as dismissable.
I noticed this, let it sit there for as long as it needed to, and then moved on. I didn’t really think about it any more than that. 

But then this week, I was reflecting on something that I thought Shundo had said at Young Urban Zen. After someone had complimented me he said something like, “One of the reasons we have places like Young Urban Zen is so that Shannon can hear things like that, because she won’t seem to see it for herself.” His comment made me wonder why I couldn’t see these things about myself, why I couldn’t accept compliments.
At first, I told myself that it was because of my family, that we had been raised not to praise ourselves, not to accept compliments, not to see ourselves as above others. I thought about my dad’s generation, and how they were raised to be humble, to defer to others, to not think they were "all that." And as I thought about this last part, I thought about how that generation set an example for us by how they lived their lives. But as I pictured this, I saw the other examples that were set by them: I heard a mocking of people for being emotional, heard a chastising of women for being so touchy feely, remembered a  responding to crying with a stoicism, focused intently on stopping any expression of emotion.
“Oh,” I realized. “They didn’t value emotion. In fact, they did everything they could to stop it from happening. And they made it clear that emotion was bad, that it should be squelched, hidden, that it was a problem that needed to be contained.”

And then I realized that I am emotion. I am expressive and affectionate and spontaneous and I feel. And then it really hit me. “I can’t value myself, because I don’t value emotion. I can’t be myself because I’ve been told my whole life that this me- the silliness, the expression of emotions, the vulnerability, the love  - is weak, is unimportant, is frivolous. If the expression of emotions makes others uncomfortable, if vulnerability is a burden, if love were better off hidden or contained; then I make others uncomfortable, I am a burden, I would be better off if I were hidden or contained.

My gut dropped, and if I hadn’t been driving, I would have just laid down and cried. But, I was driving so I had to just sit with it, feel it, cry as much as I could while operating a vehicle.

I was glad I saw this; glad  to understand that I’ve been conditioned to not value myself, and that it’s about emotions, not me.

But then I thought about all the other messages we receive in our society. I thought about the devaluing of cultures and races and gender and class and even simple things like how we dress or wear our hair.
And then I thought about my students- about the subtle messages they receive about their culture, their skin color, where they live, how they talk, what their parents do. Many of them are surrounded by rejection of their very selves and I wondered how they could survive that.

It made me vow to never ever do that to them. I knew that I couldn't stop the messages in the media, or in the parents in our community, or in our society as a whole, but I knew that I could stop it in my classroom. And I didn't mean about race or culture or any of those stereotypes, I mean about the individual. I mean about every little kid in my room and what they offer each time they speak or act. They need to be accepted for their offering, whatever it is. How else will they ever accept themselves, experience the love of others, and offer their true natures? That's what this is all about, letting them develop into who they are. And I can support that by accepting them, no matter what.