Yesterday felt like one of those days where the universe was trying to get my attention.
I know. A little Cynthia woo woo to begin with.
But between the eclipse, the Perseids meteor shower, and the wider sense of movement in the sky, something about the day felt significant to me. Not dramatic. Not theatrical. More like a quiet insistence that something was shifting.
This morning, I think I understood what the shift was.
For nearly ten years, I have spoken about Acceptance without Understanding™ as a way of accepting people before we fully understand them.
That has always been the heart of the work.
How do we move through difference?
How do we create belonging when someone else’s identity, experience, belief, grief, faith, culture, or way of being does not immediately make sense to us?
How do we stop making acceptance wait until understanding catches up?
But today, something widened.
I had been listening to Shannon Shallcross speak about how often we ask “why” when life hurts us.
* Why did the relationship end?
* Why did they leave?
* Why did I lose that job?
* Why did this happen?
* Why did someone I love die?
We ask why because we think understanding will help us accept what happened.
And sometimes it does.
Sometimes the answer helps.
Sometimes the explanation gives us language, context, closure, or a way to make meaning.
But sometimes the answer never comes.
Sometimes the answer comes and still does not heal the wound.
Sometimes life does not explain itself in a way that lets us move forward neatly.
That is when it hit me.
Acceptance without Understanding™ is not only about accepting other people.
It is also about accepting life when life does not give us the why.
That feels enormous to me.
Because this is not simply an idea I teach.
Looking back over the losses, endings, abandonment, and reinvention of the last decade, I can see more clearly now that Acceptance without Understanding™ was also part of how I survived without becoming bitter.
It helped me keep moving when the why did not come.
It helped me accept what had happened without letting what happened become all of me.
That does not mean the pain did not matter.
It does not mean the questions were wrong.
It does not mean we should not seek understanding where understanding is possible.
It means we cannot always make understanding the condition for continuing to live.
And that matters in leadership too.
Because leaders are often asked to move through uncertainty before they have full understanding.
* A team changes.
* A strategy fails.
* A trusted colleague leaves.
* A restructure lands badly.
* A conflict emerges.
* A decision has unintended consequences.
* A future people planned for disappears, and another one has to be built before anyone feels ready.
In those moments, the search for understanding can be useful.
Reflection matters.
Learning matters.
Accountability matters.
But if we make complete understanding the condition for moving forward, we can get stuck waiting for a level of certainty life rarely gives us.
Acceptance is not passivity.
It is not resignation.
It is not pretending pain, harm, failure, or consequence do not matter.
Acceptance is the point where we stop arguing with the reality that something has happened, so we can begin deciding what responsibility asks of us now.
That is a leadership practice.
* To accept what is true enough to respond wisely.
* To keep asking better questions without requiring perfect answers.
* To move forward without denying the past.
I often say we need to live our lives like a clock.
A clock has history.
It knows where it has been.
But it cannot move backwards through time.
It is designed to keep moving forward.
So are we.
Maybe Acceptance without Understanding™ is one of the tools that helps us do that.
Not only with each other.
But with life itself.
The last time I had an epiphany this significant about this work was in 2020, in Medellín, Colombia, when I realised that acceptance without understanding could grow into acceptance with understanding.
This feels like the next widening.
A breaking out of the box I had built around the idea.
For years, I thought I was teaching people how to accept one another before understanding was complete.
Now I am beginning to see that I was also learning how to accept life when understanding never arrived.
Maybe that is why this feels so important.
Because the work was never only about other people.
It was also teaching me how to keep living.
How to keep moving.
How to keep becoming.
And maybe that is the point of living with our own work for long enough.
Sometimes we teach something for years, only to discover it still has more to teach us.
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