At the Google conference, Wisdom 2.0 in San Francisco last weekend, I went to a talk by a renowned writer and speaker. She made a comment which stuck with me, because it seemed to encapsulate the value and importance of generalities in how we think in the East and the West:
In the East we are taught the ability to accept things.
In the West, we are taught the ability to change things.
As a white, middle class, female Westerner, one of the things that I have appreciated is that I have had many amazing opportunities in terms of my rights – education, reproductive choices, freedom to vote, own property and travel on my own. Many people before me fought for these changes – my great-grandmother for example, the first female member of Parliament in the United Kingdom: Nancy Astor, Emmeline Pankhurst, Marie Stopes, Margaret Sanger and Rosa Parks to name a few. These women fundamentally believed in the value of change, the need for change and the value of activism as a tool for change.
Activism is partly about believing in something so strongly, that you are unwilling to accept things as they are. It is also partly about picking your battles and strategies, knowing when and how to fight for the change.
Until I discovered Yoga and meditation, I had a hard time accepting things which I didn’t like – from the mundane to the life-changing, I struggled when things didn’t happen as I hoped they would. Parenthood continued to challenge this, particularly when my son was 2 years old and received a cancer diagnosis. I had just finished my first yoga teacher training when this happened and Yoga, meditation and Tibetan Buddhism helped me accept what was, rather than what could have or should have been, with an openness that I would not have previously had.
The trick it seems to me, is in figuring out when to accept and when to change. While the point struck me as an interesting way to perceive the dichotomy in thinking between the East and West, which goes in part to explain why there is perhaps often difficulties in communicating and finding connection between these two worlds, it is of course too simplistic an aphorism.
We spend a lot of time in the West, educating our children in the intellectual sphere: math, physics, biology, literature, but scant time on emotional and social intelligence. It seems to me that learning how to both develop your social and emotional intelligence, through mindfulness practices would benefit our society so that we can learn how to accept the things that we cannot change:
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference
~Niebuhr
©Tamsin Astor-Jack, Yoga Brained LLC
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