Accommodation, according to Webster:
1) something supplied for convenience or to satistfy a need;
2) a public conveyance (as a train) that stops at all or nearly all points;
3) the automatic adjustment of the eye for seeing at different distances by changes in
the convexity of the crystalline lens; also, the range over which such adjustment is
possible.
The price of being open to believing anything is its natural endpoint: believing in nothing. We live in a world, and I live in a city, where open-minded tolerance is such a glorified principle that we forget what it really means, what it looks like in personal practice: a lack of commitment to any one thing; a twisting in the wind; an absence of passion about any idea accept the vilification of those who don’t operate under such “enlightenment”.
The problem lies not in accepting that other people may have viewpoints different from our own; it lies in using this acceptance as an excuse to not form and follow our own belief system. An excuse to just be along for the ride rather than preparing your own itinerary. It is adjustment to whatever the world offers. It is emptiness decorated with fancy words and placed on a pedestal in the town square. It is a train that stops at all points but has no home base. It is a reaction to the world around us, a shifting of shape, a concession for convenience. Glorified weakness.
We walk around in our indecision, in our lack of intention toward life, and wonder why we are so frustrated. Day after day of the same activities. Sitting in front of a computer screen blinding our eyes with whatever the information superhighway has to offer us today. We sit back and wait for the world to change our lives, to make something happen for us. And we wonder why we are bored. Cradled by our desk chairs, wondering when passion will show up. We approach our lives in the resignation of accommodation because commitment requires too much risk and effort. We are living out of a place where our needs must be met rather than out of a recognition that we are designed with a purpose that will not be revealed to us on our living room couch; it will only be revealed by actually LIVING. And living requires us to get up, to take chances, to make plans, to risk ourselves (hearts, comfort, rejection, disapproval) in the belief that there is a point to us, in the faith that there is more than this. We will not be motivated to live with intention (and all the uncertainty that comes with it) if our highest goal remains to believe in anything instead of in one thing. When we start to believe, when we commit to ourselves by choosing a path rather than wandering around in only the area in front of us, the world changes. We see relationships instead of people. We see opportunities instead of defeat. We see hope instead of fear. It’s the difference between making a choice and standing still. We can go on surviving, or we can actually be alive.