The Serenity Prayer has resonated with me this week.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference.People, their words and actions and contradictions, never cease to amaze me. Myself, my husband, yes all of you, included. We’re only human, why am I surprised?
With people, you just have to accept them for who they are, as you nor me nor anyone can change them. Is this true? Universal acceptance? Yes, I believe this is true. I accept you for all that you are. I am not your judge, and you are not mine.
Courage comes into play with choice. You choose to allow someone in your life. Deciding whether or not to allow a person into your life, to run in your circles, takes courage. The choice to involve someone in your life is typically easy. The choice to not allow someone in your life is not fun, but sometimes, for serenity and sanity’s sake, the choice is yours to make. This is, after all, your life, you are empowered to make choices concerning your life (in case you’re new to the game I thought I’d add this as a reminder).
Notice in this prayer there is no mention of tolerance. Do you have people in your life that you accept who they are but you can only tolerate for only so long? The Serenity Prayer is not so black and white, tolerance is the challenging gray area.
Wisdom to know the difference of when to accept or to have the courage to change your involvement with people sometimes takes learning some lessons along the way. With human compassion and trust, we allow people in our lives that continually lie, emotionally drain or contradict what we value. How many times do you need to bang your head against the wall in frustration after encounters with such people? Sometimes frustration occurs more often than others.
The Serenity Prayer applies to everything. We the People are so unique, brilliant, talented and equally bizarre, eccentric and challenging that we are always an easy target and topic for discussion.
For me, I most often apply this mantra to my life in general. Either accept the life your living or have the courage to change. Sometimes my decisions are wise, sometimes they are foolish. I either accept the decision made or change those decision. Sometimes these decisions are not popular. Good think popularity isn’t part of the prayer either.
multi-hyphenated-me 