Crumbs in the morning light

Morning. I wake up first, I have to get ready for work. I go out to the kitchen. Directly in front of me is a table. In the light from the window falling on the surface of the table, the crumbs are perfectly visible. My first thought: “Well, the morning begins with the fact that I will wipe someone’s yesterday’s crumbs. As if you couldn’t clean up after yourself.» I feel annoyed, irritated. I start making my own coffee. I glance back at the table. In the morning light from the window, the crumbs are especially striking. It is simply impossible to eat at such a table. Such big crumbs, how could you not notice them in the evening? Why didn’t you clean up after yourself? While waiting for the coffee to brew, I think. I remember how last night at this very table, Marina and Sonya, my wife and daughter, drank tea together. I didn’t notice any crumbs back then. While I wipe the table, I think about Marina and Sonya — and I feel joy. I like to think about the hours when we are all sitting at this table together. I think about what a great happiness it is that I can take care of them. The crumbs on the table have now become signs of habitation and home warmth for me. At the same time, I am aware of a change in my state — I am no longer irritated, and I become cheerful. A good day is starting.

Psychotherapist Carl Rogers once remarked, «It’s an amazing paradox that I can only change when I accept myself the way I am.» I shared my morning observation to show that the experience of our inner experiences is fluid, changeable, contradictory. And in order to change, we need to realize what is happening to us.

What does it mean to accept yourself? Usually in the language «acceptance» is used to mean passive acceptance or approval of something. In psychotherapy, acceptance is an active process; here acceptance is different from submission, justifying one’s own shortcomings, or indulging one’s own weaknesses. Self-acceptance means seeing yourself as a whole and responding to yourself as a whole, and not reacting to individual impulses and identifications. Without denying or forcing out our desires, but by seeing and accepting ourselves as we are, we give ourselves the opportunity to understand the true motives of our behavior. Here I am, annoyed by the crumbs, I start brewing coffee … and I think about my relationship with my loved ones. This is a pause. It was this stop that allowed me to see what was happening in a new way. It was as if I had ceased to identify myself with my own irritation, and it had lost its power over me. A pause, a stop that allows you to see what is happening in a new way — that’s what is important. Alas, we often forget that we need such a stop in order to take a fresh look at our own lives.