Dilemmas

A student of life or philosophy or psychology may pose the question: Aren’t we okay as we are? And we ask additional questions when looking at acceptance—universal acceptance in particular. We have to accept ourselves! We’re great as we are! We must be okay!

We are okay as we are, but we can always improve.

I myself don’t want to try to explain this duality, this tension, but for practical purposes I deem both notions “right” and claim that both are important. We are okay as we are, but we can also always improve. I believe we need the former notion to ground ourselves, and the latter to grow.

A lesser dilemma appears to be that inevitably, in our reality system where space and time are core ideas, we’re spending time—yet often, we’re wasting it. That means we can’t help using time, but that doesn’t mean we’re making good use of it.

I don’t aim to explain and judge, for perhaps we can’t use time incorrectly—or may waste time on things we deem useful. But I do believe there are qualitative differences in how we use time and that it behooves us to pay attention to how we use time.

How these two statements relate to this short book is simple: Working on ourselves doesn’t mean that we don’t accept ourselves. It means that we acknowledge and embrace opportunities to grow, and that working on ourselves makes for beneficial use of time.