One of my most favorite books in the whole world is The Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein. It is a beautiful story with endearing illustrations and a sweet, happy message, and seeing the copy sitting on my bookshelves to this day reminds me of the blissful recollections of joy and hope I experienced when reading Shel Silverstein as a child.

The Missing Piece is also total bullshit.

The message this book communicates is that we must be whole to find or be worthy of love, that having flaws makes us less desirable and that we should work on them rather than relying on other people. My experience has proven this idea to not only be completely and utterly and absolutely wrong in every single possible way, but also to have led me down the very life paths it promised to help me avoid. To be fair this mindset was not instilled in me by this book, but instead by the society in which I was raised and the people around me who were unable to give me the kinds of skills which actually lead to a fulfilling and successful life. Like most queer people (and a good many heterosexuals too) I did not have the support of social groups which tend to coalesce around families to support, validate, and increase the success of pair bonding, structures which are direct repudiations of this idea that we do not or should not need others. Burdened also by trauma from an abusive childhood and saddled with toxic ideas of self worth, I was left to my own inadequate devices, without role models or support structures, spending most of my adult life trying to make sense of and undoing the wreckage of my earlier life, trying to eek out an existence in a world which is often hostile and opportunistic. As a child and a young man I always assumed that I would be married with children by this point in my life. But I have been single for more years than I have been loved, and as a weepy Libra this fact comes as quite a hard pill to swallow as I swiftly approach the end of my thirties.

In spite of this detour I love my life. I wake up nearly every morning with excitement and enjoy immensely the mundaneness of the every day, even though I have very little and life has not met any of my expectations for it. This is a result of the process and tools I was taught and developed that are detailed in my book, and was not always this way. In my earlier life whenever I was in a relationship I constantly wondered if I actually loved those with whom I was lucky enough to spend some time or whether my feelings were simply just a codependent needed for them. Queer people and women have histories of being attacked for our mental health, justified or no, and as a result it is difficult to move through life without questioning whether or not the things you feel are really legitimate or just a result of the trauma through which you have navigated. Most people who had input into my life, from family to friends to therapists, all suggested in varying degrees that having mental hangups made a person less desirable and less worthy of love. It wasn’t until my last relationship was ending (during which I was engaged to be married) that I finally realized the truth of my reality—I was both codependent and in love. Never in all my life, with all the therapy and self help and unsolicited advice had anyone suggested that codependence and love are not mutually exclusive, nor that I was valuable and worthy of love even though I was mentally ill, and I could also be capable of real love in spite of my hardships and difficulties and that my love for someone was not cheapened by own shortcomings or weaknesses. Feelings for other people are not only not bad, they are what make us human and are part of our experience, even and especially when they are overwhelming—it is instead behavior that can be bad, and feelings do not and do not need to equal behavior.

In a culture which sheds our wounded we are constantly reminded of how we fall short. Social media can be the worst place that this rears its head, with countless memes about being a whole person, about loving yourself first, and lists of features to identify the right person (instead of being the right person). There’s one meme with a Pokemon Squirtle throwing flowers, the text exclaiming the author to be a complete and interesting person and thus it’s okay to be alone. Yes, it’s okay to be alone, but it’s laughable that anyone thinks they are a complete person, and interesting is highly subjective (I’m so boring I often bore myself). This meme was made precisely because not one of us is complete and this fact sits sourly with those who dislike their own flaws. Being human means a reliance on others, and this culture which denies that is crafted by people who wish not to be so reliant on others, which is entirely understandable but a rejection of who we are as a species and as individuals. Many people also delude themselves into thinking there is nothing wrong with them, when in fact there may even be a great deal wrong, because a lack of tools to get well or fix our own problems and little social support leaves us feeling helpless, the only method of coping then being self-delusion.

Ignoring our own problems and shortcomings or pretending we are fine or whole is exactly the opposite of acceptance. If we seek harmony with ourselves and with the world we must first come to accept our flaws and weaknesses—which every single one of us has. This sounds great in practice, but what exactly is acceptance? This has bugged me for a very long time since the word acceptance is thrown around by lay persons and therapists alike as if any of them really know what that means. A raging, adulterous, cocaine addict once told me that a person had to first be whole to find success in relationships. So of course they did not. The people who make these kinds of memes, books, and advice are simply trying to reject their own inability to cope with the challenges of being human, and is in reality a tormented soul trying to make sense of the pain and frustration that life can bring, and because ideas of acceptance are misinformed, most people are unable to actually practice it.

Acceptance, first of all, is not a mindset. We are often powerless over our emotions. You wouldn’t be expected to stay calm and happy if someone came into your house and murdered you, right? But why do we expect ourselves to try and feel good when other bad things happen to us? If a partner insults you or your day at work doesn’t go well or you are ravenously hungry, why do you expect yourself to feel anything other than unhappy? Trying to change our mindset when things are going poorly or we are under stress is called denial—It is a toxic way to approach life that trains the mind to ignore reality, which itself is a behavior that later comes with very serious consequences and causes one to live life in every aspect but the present. Most methamphetamine addicts I know have done or were encouraged to make gratitude lists while in recovery, and guess how many of them achieved the kind of happiness I aspire to? Zero. This kind of practice denies people the right to feel bad, and so when they do feel bad are instead taught to try to change the feeling through action, which does not work. No—acceptance is not changing your attitude or mindset, which is why trying to do that fails to change our lives and only leads to more and constant frustration and insanity.

Acceptance is instead the simple act of inaction. Choosing not to do the thing in response to our feelings that we would otherwise is what acceptance looks like in practice. You feel bad, but you don’t act on it, which includes outward actions like not shouting or taking pills or hitting someone else but is more precisely the act of not trying desperately to change the feeling itself. Instead, trying to understand the feeling—why you have it, where it came from, and what it tells you about life and yourself as a person. This kind of introspection into who you are in relation to yourself and not the stimuli around you is the act of acceptance. When your partner says you’re fat or you didn’t do the dishes right, and your blood boils and your eyes narrow as feelings of anger and humiliation rise within you the person who does not accept their own flaws and weaknesses and has no compassion for themselves will choose to instead jump to their own defense, when the act of acceptance would either be to do nothing or to do the dishes the way your partner wants (within reason, of course—I mean, it’s a fucking dish washer. They don’t have to be spotless going in!). Just because a person levels criticism does not mean that criticism is right. It could be and is most often completely wrong and entirely subjective to that other person’s failure to accept their own insecurities and shortcomings. But the act of responding to such criticism is the opposite of acceptance (as is leveling that criticism, for the most part. If you want the dishes done a certain way, do it yourself). Feeling it’s not okay to be flawed we then react to being told we are flawed and in turn become hurtful ourselves and thus give more power to our shortcomings, not less, while simultaneously destroying relationships and engendering resentment. Reacting to our insecurities and the things we view to be deficient within us actively seeks to ignore why these things exist in the first place, by trying to change them by outward action, without proper understanding of why they are there in the first place, and then we are ineffective and exist in a ceaseless cycle of self-incrimination and interpersonal dissatisfaction. When someone says you’re fat, responding by telling them they are mean is essentially the exact same behavior, each of us pointing out a flaw in the other.

It is not only true that we all have flaws and shortcomings, it is okay and desirable that we do. It is the entire point of life to have a variety of characteristics, some good and some unhelpful or even down right bad. Life would be nothing without this variation, indeed we would not even exist. If I was instead an accomplished lawyer with a big house and lots of money and not someone who nearly died from suicide and alcoholism I would not have come to find the cure for alcoholism nor other things like baldness and depression. There must be a balance in the creative and destructive forces of the Universe in order for us to even be here, for us to be interesting and desirable, and because we too are a part of this balanced Universe we must also reflect that balance. Though you or your partner (or both) may exhaust much of the day complaining about the other and all their little flaws and shortcomings, the reality is that those very things you complain about are also the very things you will desperately miss when that person is gone (notice I said when and not if). It is good, right, and proper that we all fall short in the typical measure of human beings, and the interestingness and adventure of life exists within the borders of what is good and what is not and our journey between them, the growth that develops, and the life experience we accrue. So you can stop feeling bad about your shortcomings, including the things you want and the feelings you have.

You should, however, feel very badly about the things you’ve done. There is an enormous difference between having feelings and acting on them. Because acceptance brings us peace, the opposite, which is not accepting and as such acting on feelings, brings us the opposite of peace, which cannot be resolved until our actions are as well. If your partner constantly criticizes you, insults you, and fights with you, are you any different when you do the same in return? Of course not—Because you are justified by your feelings, right? This is exactly how your partner (or adversary) feels too—slighted, annoyed, offended—and they too justify their actions by their feelings. If everyone does this, when does the madness end? Feeling insecure and vulnerable because of our flaws we act on them, and when everyone does this our worlds erupt into chaos and conflict. This too is exactly how the most heinous of criminals feel—I have a feeling and am entitled to act on that feeling. It is the idea that we are not okay for having feelings, so we seek to act on them to justify the feeling, instead of seeking to understand it and find compassion for ourselves and our place in the Universe.

Actions are never justified by emotions, and failing to separate the two is what gets us into trouble and is the opposite of acceptance. The act of acceptance is simply choosing not to act on our emotions, which includes trying to change them. When I was codependent with a partner the proper advice I should have received was that it was perfectly fine for me to feel the overwhelming feelings I had for them, my fears of being abandoned, and my desire to be near them. These feelings originated from my past experiences of rejection and abuse, and it was only natural to have these kinds of feelings as a result, and finding compassion for myself and for these feelings would have also diminished their influence over me. Instead of trying to control those feelings by being overly concerned with my partner’s actions or desperately trying to find some way to satisfy them, I could instead have let my partner do what they wish and spend time trying to understand why the feelings existed in the first place and what they had to say about myself, my experience, and the nature of living. If someone hurts you, do not jump out and retaliate toward them. Do not even make your hurt known until you have time to understand it and to come to terms with it. Getting to know why and how you work on your own terms and not in relation to others is what the act of acceptance accomplishes. I did not understand this until I was well into the later half of my fourth decade, and much of the hardship and suffering of my life and failure to find emotionally healthy and desirable partners was a direct result of my unwillingness to accept that I was flawed and had serious shortcomings, where instead if I had accepted them and come to terms with the pain and trauma which I had experienced would instead have found great success. Surprisingly, I found that most of that which I viewed as flaws such as being sensitive, permissive, homosexual, horny, or defiant were not actually even flaws or shortcomings but were instead what society, religion, and opportunistic and abusive individuals told me were flaws and shortcomings in order that they could better control me, and it wasn’t until I spent time actively accepting what I perceived to be my flaws that I even realized many of them were not flaws in the least! Instead of fighting your boyfriend or girlfriend or friends or family or political climate, discover your true strengths by accepting your own flaws and insecurities. You will discover how to live the kind of life you truly want and not the one other people have chosen for you.

No person is whole. We are all equally strong and weak in different areas of our lives, and listening to garbage self help about how you need to be different than you are for reasons which seek to cover up our wounds rather than accept them only prevents our ability to grow as a person. Recognizing this now has also allowed me to give love to those who fall short, where before I also withheld it due to the incorrect notions I had been taught about who did and did not deserve it. Real growth comes from accepting our weaknesses and flaws and understanding the true parameters of our individual worth, and that we are desirable not in spite of our flaws and shortcomings, but because of them.

Weight and physical appearance is often an aspect we misjudge, and depression often accompanies misconceptions of our self worth and may include severe problems like substance use. You can also read more about how I practice the tools in my book in my own life.