The Four Acceptances
Metaphors can provide windows of light. Improvisation, about which I have taught and written for decades, is a useful lens. In a recent TED X talk at Stanford, Dan Klein, my successor in the classroom at the University, gave his audience a five-minute crash course in what it means to improvise. “We are all improvisers already,” he declared. And then he compressed the whole of improv into three minutes. First we look at offers.
Life is full of offers. In fact, we can see everything as an offer, from “would you like a cup of tea?” to the expression on your boss’s face, the weather, the price of flour, the next election, a sunny day, a graduation, an automobile accident. Everything is an offer. No exceptions. Reality comes in the form of stuff that happens, and people with whom we interact. Our job is to step up to these offers and accept them. (And then to work with them. . . .)
The role of improv is to teach us how to accept.
There are four “Acceptances.”
1. Accepting the ideas and offers of your partner
Training to improvise begins with the crazy premise that your partner is a genius (and always right) and that your job is to first notice what they are offering, ingest and accept whatever it is and then build on it by adding something. The time-honored phrase for this is Yes-AND. We discover that if we block or deny or otherwise argue with the offer we are dead in the water. In order to go forward together we need to be on the same page.
So improvisers accept what their partner gives them and works with it. Period.
1. Accepting your own ideas
This step stops many of us. Accepting one’s own ideas can be a challenge. How quick we are to judge our thoughts and actions and find them wanting. Improv requires that we cultivate the same generous mind we use with our partners in the Yes-And phase of the work. We must say YES to whatever our mind brings us, no matter how odd or unwanted. Each of us is a fountainhead of ideas if we can only learn to open to and accept those first thoughts. We learn how to give our “editor” a paid vacation and instead sign up our personal cheerleader: “Now that’s an idea . . . GO with it!” As artists and parents and colleagues we are often the first to close the box on our own ideas. Improv games train us to embrace whatever shows up in the in basket of our imagination. Give up trying to find “a good idea” and work with the idea that is most readily found. Then work to make it good.
3.Accepting what life brings you
Accepting what life brings you is the application of this improv maxim to everyday. It implies, of course, that we stay open no matter what the content and to use the positive mindset we have been cultivating on the improv stage as we maneuver life’s ups and downs. It asks us to continually refresh our capacity to stay open to offers and to situations that aren’t easy or pleasant.
4.Accepting the unacceptable
It’s possible that this instruction may appear unacceptable. The fourth acceptance is really a subset of the advice to keep the improv attitude alive during our day to day, even when that stretches our psyche. We will all meet challenges that seem to defy common sense, justice or fairness. We will all encounter the unacceptable at some point. The laundry list of these is sobering: untimely death, lawsuits, accidents, abandonment, terrorism . . . well, we don’t really need to identify the details. What I may find unacceptable may differ from your list. But, make no mistake: a human life includes such events.
A teacher of mine years ago gave me the koan: “Accept the unacceptable.” I was meant to ponder the enigmatic meaning of this phrase. Well, of course, one should not accept such things. And, clearly, there are situations where acceptance means challenging or fighting for what one believes is right. Still, in order to be a proactive combatant one needs to truly accept the reality of the circumstance in order to take constructive action and develop a strategy for responding. This does not imply passivity. It’s a very active instruction.
I suggest that you tuck this koan away. Some day, perhaps when you least expect it you will be faced with the unacceptable. Pull it out then. It can help.
May 24, 2012
