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Acceptance is Freedom: How to Live Your Own Life Without Imposing on Others
You work in a profession with people. There’s people your age, people older than you, lots of people younger than you, and people who care for the young people who are really invested in what you do with the young people. Yeah, I know, I could have said colleagues, staff, parents, and children. I wanted to make sure you were still reading.
In all of these interactions over all of the days you are in school, you will meet some people who see things differently than you. Whether it’s a perspective on a student, an idea about a lesson, or a thought about the direction of your school, you might not agree.
This comes to the moment of finding true freedom: do you spend your time trying to steer this person away from their opinion, or do you accept it?
Or as Ryan Holiday put it: “…you ought to live your own life in such a way that it doesn’t negatively impose on others… you have to be open-minded and accepting enough to let others do the same.”
It’s very hard to sit there and listen to someone spout off about how they’re right about something. It’s an even harder pill to swallow when that person is talking about something controversial, or something that challenges strong beliefs you might have.
