This is a word I feel we all need to get acquainted with. Mainly because we often have to adjust our lives for things which are happening around us. Over the last two years we have had a lot of adjustments, especially losing people we love way too soon. One afternoon at the hospital where I worked as a chaplain, I visited a man whose wife was dying of cancer. He said, “I like to think of this time as becoming acclimated, not accepting, of living without my wife”. I listened intently to what he was saying. What if all of us tried to become acclimated with the things that happen to us in life instead of going with the flow, adjusting and fighting our way through.

To become acclimated we are adapting a new attitude, creating a new climate, or working with a situation. In other words, we need to change to suit different conditions of our life, or to cause a change in someone else. We are adapting and modifying our surrounding to move forward with our lives.

Sounds great, right. So how does one become acclimated? It’s a gradual process. As the man above, each day as he visited his wife in the hospital he thought about his wife’s passing and how he would feel once she was gone. He processed his thoughts of life without her in a slow deliberate manner.

A good example is a runner preparing for a marathon. A runner trains each day either in the gym or on a track. Once in the gym the runner increases weights and repetitions to acclimate his body for endurance. On the track the runner will acclimate his body to run at a steady pace for a long distance. This is something which will be done in increments over several months or even a year.

I know sometimes we need to become acclimated in a short period of time. Our resilience and stamina will kick in during this time but we will become acclimated and adjust to our new or difference situation.

I think most of the time we need faith and trust in ourselves to get through certain things in life. I often reflect on what I have had to become acclimated to in my life. Two years ago I came to England and have been here because of COVID. Did I want to move here permanently will yes but not this soon. So I spent a year in sabbatical to transition/acclimate myself to my new situation. It’s been through a lot of adjustments, compromise and accommodations to bring myself to a form of acclimation.

You can get there but with everything we need time to process and have patients with ourselves.

Footnotes: definitions/explanations are from the dictionary.cambridge.org and http://www.meriam-webster.com.