The act of acceptance is to put aside ones own emotions and personal views and see the person for whom they really are. Acceptance is a complicated emotion in and of itself; it can bring feelings of love and hatred into account. My definition of acceptance is by far more complex than any dictionary, because at some point in our life we are all introduced to something that might be out of our comfort zone, but we see past those petty differences in order to grow as a person and into society. A great psychologist Albert Ellis once said, “Acceptance is not love. You love a person because he or she has lovable traits, but you accept everybody just because they're alive and human.” Acceptance is getting the news you do not want to hear, and having to live with the results, because there is no other way around it. As I sat in my bed, tossing and turning, trying to get a final night of peace, before the dreaded recurring school year started, my phone brought me out of my dazed confusion. I heard my best friend Kenneth’s panicked voice and knew immediately that this call was important. He was telling me, my friend Winston had drowned earlier that night. The news instantly shot through my body like a jolt of lightning, I listened in disbelief as I refused to believe he would no longer be gracing us with his presence. I knew what I had heard but my simplistic mind could not handle the news of such magnitude. Foolishly, I tried to laugh it off and believe that I had just fallen asleep and this was all a sadistic dream my messed up mind had conjured up. Within a few brief days of living in disbelief and pain, I would be confronted with the sight of his lifeless body, knowing he would never speak a word again. The sounds of Winston’s mother and sisters crying louder than the priest could speak, was an alarm clock to my thoughts and made me come to the realization of the actions that have been occurring over the past week. I had to accept the fact that even with the worst news, there was nothing that could change it. The pain was unbearable to accept. It was unreal to believe that this was the end of a valued friendship, which was an even worse emotion that I have felt in my short-lived life. Another instance of the challenges I faced when forced to accept a life altering circumstance came into reality when I sat in front of a diabetic doctor. As I read the lips of the doctor who was speaking with a greater vocabulary than my underdeveloped four-ye