Thoughts on Acceptance by LM's Aunt

I think Michael J. Fox meant that happiness grows in direct proportion with your acceptance of your life, your world, your circumstances - not your acceptance of being unhappy!  And as far as unhappiness growing in direct proportion with your expectations - yes, if you are always expecting more, you will never be happy with what you have.  I totally understand this quote and agree with it whole heartedly.  I don't remember ever being an unhappy person - even when I was in a destructive and abusive marriage, when I was a struggling divorced mother of two living on food stamps, when I finally found love and my lover moved 3000 miles away - why - because you accept that there are unhappy moments in your life - everyone has terrible, unhappy, disappointing, sad moments in their lives.  How long those moments last is what makes you a happy or unhappy person.  If you accept that those times will exist for everyone, but look for the things that can balance those things out, you live a happy life with unhappy moments that don't define your whole life or personhood.  If you have expectations that you should always have everything the way you need or want it to be - yes, you will become more and more unhappy. 

Recently reading about Patrick Swayze and Teddy Kennedy I have been touched by just that - they had terrible unbearable things occur in their lives, but they both died "happy people" because they found love and meaning in the good things in their lives and did not accept that their fate defined their happiness or personhood.  They were both amazing men who knew they were fighting losing battles yet did not let that define them in their last days.