Accepting our current situation

Here's a passage I found on the Wildmind website about the importance of acceptance even when there's something about ourselves we really want or need to change:

One interesting thing about meditation is that if we try too hard to change it actually makes it harder to change.

I'll tell you a story. There was once a man who wanted to become the finest swordsman in Japan, so he went to seek out a hermit who was reputed to be the best teacher, although it was said that he lived in a remote place and rarely took on students. After a long search, the seeker found the hermit deep in the mountains and asked how long it would take him to become a great sword master.

The hermit looked him up and down and said, "Maybe five years." The seeker thought this sounded like a long time, so he asked, "How long would it take if I tried really hard?" The hermit stroked his beard and thought about it. After a while he said, "Maybe ten years."

Desiring to change is okay, but longing for change actually hinders our growth. An important aspect of developing acceptance is learning to avoid craving. Craving is when we long for something, and unfortunately craving can make us very unhappy. One common form of craving is to crave experiencing something different from our current experience. This longing actually creates an unhealthy form of dissatisfaction with what we're currently experiencing since the flip-side of craving is aversion. Craving and aversion are polar twins. When we crave to be experiencing something different then we reject our current experience.

We will never learn to change until we learn to let go. And if we refuse to accept where we are, it's impossible to learn to let go.