One more dose of Floyd Skloot before I have to take the book back to the library: 

One way of spinning this is to say that my daily experience is often spontaneous and exciting.  Not fragmented and intimidating, but unpredictable, continuously new.  I may lose track of things, or of myself in space, my line of thought, but instead of getting frustrated I try to see this as the perfect time to stop and figure out what i want or where I am.  I accept my role in the harlequinade.  It’s not so much a matter of making lemonade out of life’s lemons, but rather of learning to saver the shock, taste, texture, and aftereffects of a mouthful of unadulterated citrus.

Acceptance is a deceptive word.  It suggests compliance, a consenting to my condition and to who I have become.  This form of acceptance is often seen as weakness, submission.  We say "I accept my punishment." Or "I accept your decision."  But such assent, while passive in essence, does provide the stable, rocklike foundation for coping with a condition that will not go away.  It is a powerful passivity, the Zen of Illness, that allows for endurance.

[. . .]

I saw another kind of acceptance as being viable, the kind espoused by Robert Frost when he said, "Take what is given, and make it over your own way."  That is, after all, the root meaning of the verb "to accept," which comes from the Latin accipere, or "take to oneself."  It implies an embrace.  Not a giving up but a welcoming. 

From the essay "A Measure of Acceptance" in In the Shadow of Memory.