Really, what do I have to say this morning?

I don't want to talk about my weight, this headache, or the urge to take today off from work. I've no interest in rehashing last night's SU Women's Basketball loss, politics, or the pandemic. None of my ideas interest me.

A voice in me suggests, accept what you're feeling.

Accept this? I resist that idea. It sounds like moping. Yet, I can't recall a time when acceptance hasn't been a good move, when it has done me wrong.

But what even does acceptance look like? I sip coffee, thinking this over, tasting warm richness. I sip without expectation, a moment's break between paragraphs, and it becomes a model of acceptance.

The act of acceptance for me is a letting go of mind-clutter, being present to the moment, feeling my breath, my beating heart, the turning gears of my mind. Acceptance is a sip of coffee, warming and soothing.

I say this while also accepting that I'm unsure what acceptance is or how to go about it. The best I can do is tell stories of acceptance: a sip of coffee or the filling of pages with ink.

This morning's pages began with me complaining that I had nothing to write, rejecting each idea, putting a resistor on the wire running from my mind to the pen in my hand. My mind said, no, no, no. Still, I was committed to filling three Morning Pages and have experience enough to know that moving the pen, even just to list things unworthy of writing, overcomes resistance and turns on the lights.

Acceptances are at work in this. I accept the task of filling three Morning Pages. I accept my complaints and anxieties rather than arguing against them. I accept that moving the pen will take me somewhere.

But acceptance is hard. This morning I struggled to accept feeling lousy, but trying to recall that feeling now is delightfully difficult. It's like trying to recall a dream. Acceptance, like waking, has turned my anxiety to smoke onto which I have no hold.

I accept this moment and the next as it comes. I accept this word and the next as the pen on the page tells them to me. I accept that the line of ink on the page will lead me forward into whatever it is that may come next.