Stoic Practices: Acceptance
There is a man I see often around Tampa. We’ll call him J. He rides a three-wheeled electric bike that makes him look like someone who has decided to keep moving no matter what the road ahead brings. He once imagined a different kind of retirement. He pictured something more comfortable, with more room to breathe. Life had other plans. He does not have the retirement he expected, yet he has never seemed more alive. He volunteers at the Portico regularly. He shows up for the hard shifts. He reads and is always in the middle of some new book. He learns new technology. And he smiles. He laughs. He talks to people with an ease that feels like grace.
I got to know him well during a middle-of-the-night shift at the cold-weather shelter our church hosted for the county last year. Those late hours reveal things about a person. Some grow tired. Some grow sharp. J. stayed calm and warm through our shift. I remember thinking then that I was watching something rare. I could tell he had made peace with his circumstances and with himself. He did not carry the bitterness that often follows disappointment. He accepted the life he had as if it were the one he was meant to receive. And somehow, that acceptance opened space for energy and joy.
In recent months, I have been thinking a great deal about acceptance because my own life has been in a season of abrupt change. Not slow, steady transitions, but a stack of upheavals arriving at once. I am managing a job loss. I am searching for a new role at an age when the job market is both uncertain and, at times, unkind. I am making decisions about Social Security and Medicare that will shape the rest of my life. I am dealing with the quiet grief that comes after the death of a parent.
My husband worries that he does not see me grieving, but grief does not always announce itself with dramatic force. Mine arrives in small pieces. A reach for the phone to tell her something. A football game that should have led to one of our back-and-forth conversations. The realization that I will not be driving north for Thanksgiving or Christmas. These moments rise up when I least expect them. They sting, and then they move on.
The financial stress is real. The career uncertainty is real. The sadness is real. And yet, most of what is happening is not in my control. I cannot force a company to call me or speed up their process. I cannot reverse age or stop the natural progression of life and death. I cannot command the world to give me stability when it is not offering any. What I can control is how I respond to these circumstances. Whether I meet them with panic or with presence. Whether I allow anxiety to become the whole story or let it be just one part of the day.
Acceptance, as the Stoics understood it, is not passive. It is not resignation. It is a Practice because it is based on clarity and judgment. The word itself carries several shades of meaning. It can mean the quality or state of being accepted or acceptable. It can mean to endure something without protest. It can mean to regard events or conditions as proper, normal, or inevitable. It can even mean to recognize something as true. These definitions mirror the Stoics’ approach to the world. They encouraged a person to endure what must be endured without bitterness. To acknowledge the inevitability of change. To accept truth without distortion. And to hold oneself to what is genuinely right.
The Stoics taught that virtue begins with seeing things as they truly are. So, Acceptance, as a practice, has a way of underpinning the virtues. Wisdom guides this vision. Courage allows a person to face the truth without running from it. Justice directs a person to act rightly within that truth. Temperance keeps the response measured and grounded.
Acceptance lives at the center of these four.
Epictetus wrote that some things are within our control and others are not. That simple idea, once understood, becomes a kind of compass. It does not reduce the weight of life, but it helps a person carry it. The Stoics believed this clarity was a moral skill because clarity frees the mind from illusion. A person who accepts the limits of control becomes steadier. A person who accepts the terms of life becomes less fragile. Acceptance does not excuse a person from responsibility. Instead, it sharpens responsibility by focusing attention on the actions that can still be taken when much else feels lost.
I see this clearly when I think of J. He accepts the retirement he has, but he has not withdrawn from life. He still shows up. He still laughs. He keeps learning. His life is smaller in some ways, but it is no less meaningful. In fact, it may be more meaningful because he has stripped away the unnecessary expectations. He belongs fully to the life he has rather than the one he imagined. I recently read a line from Maya Angelou that said, “You are free when you realize you belong nowhere and everywhere.” That describes him well. He carries his sense of belonging with him. He does not wait for the world to hand it over to him.
My own acceptance is not as smooth. I feel the anxiety in my chest some mornings. I worry about decisions that seem permanent. I feel the weight of uncertainty. Yet I also feel the truth of what the Stoics taught. Acceptance is a turning toward life, not away from it. When I let the moment be what it is, even when it is painful, something inside settles. I can speak kindly to the people around me. I can do work that matters. I can be grateful for the small, steady things that still support my days. I can make decisions with a clearer mind. I can pay attention to the parts of life that remain open.
The Stoics believed acceptance was a way of aligning oneself with nature. They did not mean forests and rivers, although those matter. They meant the nature of existence itself. Everything changes. Everything rises and falls. People grow old. Bodies weaken. Jobs end. Families shift. Love remains, but the shape of it changes over time. Eastern traditions echo this truth. Impermanence is not a threat. It is a teacher. You hold what you have gently because you know you cannot hold anything tightly for long. In the Abrahamic traditions, there is an understanding that human beings live within a larger story they do not fully control. Acceptance becomes a form of humility, a recognition that we are creatures, not masters.
There is a line from Longfellow that says the best thing one can do when it is raining is to let it rain. I have carried that thought with me when the anxiety rises. It does not mean I give up. It means I stop pretending I can command the clouds. The rain will fall whether I approve or not. My task is to stay present and clear-eyed while it does. That simple act is a kind of strength. It keeps the heart steady. It allows me to do the next right thing.
When I think about the coming months, I do not know what my career will look like. I do not know what my finances will look like. I do not know how grief will move through me. What I do know is that I want to face these things with the same settled calm I see in J. He has accepted his life without bitterness. He has found a way to stay open. If he can move about town with a warm laugh and a kind word, then I can meet my own changes with steadiness. I can speak gently to others. I can offer a helping hand. I can move with purpose even when I do not know where the road leads.
I hope to live with that same acceptance. Not quiet despair, but quiet courage. Not resignation, but presence. Not a shrinking away, but a leaning in. Life has given me a different chapter than I expected. I want to enter it the way J. enters his days. With calm. With kindness. With a willingness to take the life I have and make something honest and useful from it.
This is what acceptance means to me. It is the virtue that meets the world as it is, then gives the best of oneself anyway.
