Member-only story
Acceptance: To Be Craved or Created?
When I joined Medium I explored the site. Then I took a look at my personal profile. That’s when things got complicated.
Enter a Short bio…
I could have written things like, “Dad of two, grateful husband, writer, music lover,” but, for some reason, I didn’t want to write a resume or life story. All of those things would have been true, but they didn’t describe how I felt.
The first thing that came to mind was, “Transitioning toward acceptance.”
Transitioning. Fumbling was already taken by Sara McLaughlin with her fantastically titled album Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, so I chose transitioning. Then I started thinking about the word. It carries a pretty heavy weight these days. Anything trans or transitioning seems to have a singular social connotation and I didn’t want to hijack that for my bio.
I was concerned what people might think about me or my bio if I used a certain word. I‘d become focused on risk of not gaining acceptance of those visiting Medium.
I wasn’t even thinking of that kind of acceptance when I chose to write that I was transitioning toward it. I was thinking of how hard I have been working in the past several years to accept the things in the world that bothered me, made me angry, or that I wasted mental and emotional energy on. I’ve been…
