Acceptance
By
Leonard Zwelling
It’s a quality that every good golfer must have. You hit the ball. It lands somewhere, occasionally where you planned to have it land, more than likely, not exactly. You then need to hit the ball again with the express purpose of putting the ball the next time first on the green and then in the hole. It’s a simple game; it’s just hard to play. BUT—the most important thing one must do playing golf is to accept what happens with that ball is what has happened. It may not have been what you planned, but it happened. If it’s in the sand trap, how are you going get it out on the green? If you’re 100 yards from the green with a stiff wind in your face, what shot do you play? You must accept what has happened, then put it out of your mind and move forward.
This is also the case with relationships. I have a friend with whom I have had a major falling out. The reasons don’t really matter. There is little I can do, and I have tried, to get back to civility, but as of today, I cannot. While this may be painful, it is what it is as sure as a golf ball in a sand trap. I must accept it. In doing so, I have also looked behind the anger on my side that got my friend and me here. Why am I angry and what does this anger conceal and shield me from feeling? I have done that work. Whether my friend has or not, I do not know. I am at peace with having done that work. I accept where the relationship is and what I contributed to the falling out, even as I continue to pursue avenues to get it back to where it was before the schism.
Acceptance of scientific truths is another venue where acceptance is of benefit.
Very often in my research career, I arrived at experimental results that did not fit with my hypothesis. This usually meant doing the experiment many times before accepting that my hypothesis was wrong, and something else must explain the results. On one occasion, my results were shocking. I did the experiment many times. Always with the same exact result. The ensuing manuscript tried to explain what we had seen, but we never really did understand the etiology of the bizarre finding. It turned out the result had little biologic consequence. It was just strange. However, my supervisor and I accepted what I had found.
On another occasion, the results we were getting were equally inexplicable. It was only with the collective insight of my research team that we realized we had stumbled on a critical result that required major alterations in our technology to understand and proved of great value for future research.
That’s how science goes. Any answer is not permanent. There can be dead ends. There can be newly opened doors. I fear the public did not understand the changing face of the American scientific leadership’s understanding of Covid at the beginning of the epidemic or even now. The NIH and CDC were racing as fast as they could to understand the virus, its threat to America, and a way to control it. I know there are those who believe that the federal research agencies were both inept and untruthful and maybe even criminal in what they concealed and what they contributed to the pandemic. I do not. I believe they were overwhelmed. I believe that the Trump 1.0 Administration had no disaster plan and that most of the people in key leadership positions (NIH, CDC) were pretty clueless.
However, making stuff up was a bad idea, too. Six-foot distances? Sounds like a good idea, but it is based on a hunch. Masks? Maybe they worked, maybe not. Closing schools? Terrible idea—in retrospect. And it goes on. People still want to take ivermectin for Covid even as there is no evidence it works. These people accept that it does. Mainstream medicine, does not. Everyone chooses to accept reality or they do not and create alternate facts. Acceptance is a better course of action.
So many times, I have been in meetings where even when the truth is presented, there are those who will not accept it.
Today, the Democrats will not accept the fact that they have lost any hope of making a dent in GOP cutbacks in ObamaCare health insurance subsidies during this government shutdown. Many liberal Democrats cannot accept the fact that this is a right of center country and that outside the deep blue states, liberal dogma is not accepted. If the New York mayor’s race puts a democratic socialist (Zohran Mamdani) in charge of America’s biggest city and the Democrats accept that result as a guideline for their congressional races in 2026, they will lose. Accept that!
Donald Trump is president now, even as he still hasn’t accepted his loss in 2020. No matter. He’s getting the last laugh. He is tearing down the government, marginalizing Congress, and negating both other branches of government beside his own executive function. No one should accept that because that is surely not what the Constitution described for our government, but everyone better accept that fact that that is what is happening. You can’t stop it until you accept it. This acceptance is painful. It is also a start on the way back to normalcy, but only if the Democrats accept that their current message and current leadership is not accepted by most Americans. They need a new one if they ever want to be accepted again.
Acceptance of reality is the first step toward changing it. The ball may be in the sand trap now, but with careful planning and great execution, a par may be in your future. But first, deal with the sand trap. Accept that the ball is there.
