"Lord, grant us the strength to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. This is A.A.'s famous concept of "acceptance."
The heart of this idea would seem to me to be the yielding to reality as it presents itself, not reality that we might wish it to be. This is acceptance as personal discipline and as the precondition for fundamental change.
But above all we must first learn to see what is occurring, what is happening if there is to be acceptance. We cannot accept reality unless we grasp and accept what is really happening if we are to yield, to give way.
Sometimes I think we in A.A. treat acceptance as a kind of stoicism, a kind of realism, even a stony resignation. Realism is at the heart of acceptance but resignation may be the furtherest thing from acceptance.
But first we must learn how to see and embrace what reality truly brings us, what actually is happening or occurring. But what does "learning how to see" mean in acceptance?
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