Serenity

On Facebook, a friend of mine is running an introspection group page, where each day, she poses a question for us to think about. We started in August and are continuing in September. One question from August was “What’s something you wish someone would say to you?” and yesterday the question was “What would make you happy right now?” These may seem like fairly innocuous questions, but for me, they have sparked a serious bit of introspection, for how I answer them.

You see, the first answers that pop to my mind when I read these questions are things that are not going to happen. I can want. I can wish. But there are certain things outside of my control.

I am guessing we are all familiar with the classic Serenity prayer – Grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference. It feels trite, overused, and not always quite right. And truth be told, I have spent the last two years not living the Serenity prayer, but instead, living Angela Davis’s response to it – “I’m no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”

And I have spent two years fighting, fighting to change the things I could not accept. And in some cases, my fighting made things better. In other cases, it may very well have made them worse. All I know is that I fought. I fought tooth and nail. And I fought according to my conscience.

But my voice was not the only one that mattered. In pretty much everything that happened in the last two years, I was the supporting character, not the protagonist. I could fight as much as I wanted, but the final decisions did not lie with me. And in the end, other people made their decisions based on their own consciences, based on their own ability and desire to keep or stop fighting.

And now the fight is over. Or, at least the big fights are over. There are always little fights we fight for our families every day. Those are ongoing, and I will continue to try to effect change when and how I can. But in the overarching areas of my life, the fight is over. There is nothing fighting can accomplish, because the battles have already been won or lost. Now is the time of dealing with the consequences, accepting what is, and moving forward from where we are now, not where I wish we could be.

Back to the original Serenity prayer, then. Except it still does not feel right to me. I am not good at being someone who just accepts “what is”, especially when “what is” is not something I find particularly acceptable. But, like it or not, there are things I canNOT change.

Which moves me from Angela Davis to Maya Angelou – “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.”

There are circumstances in my life that I cannot change, no matter how much I do not like them. But just accepting that, as in the Serenity prayer, leads me down an unhealthy path of depression and anxiety and bitterness. It is not a path I want to go down. Instead, I need to take control of the one thing I can always control – me.  I cannot change the circumstances, but I can change me. I can change my attitude.

And that brings us back to our fairly innocuous questions in the introspection group. In August, I gave an answer to the question about what I wanted someone to say to me that was “shallow”, something that is possible (if not plausible) for someone to say to me, but then also referenced the one thing I *really* want someone to say to me, which, while not exactly impossible, is highly improbable. It is an attitude that has me accepting a thing I cannot change, but wallowing in it, delighting in the bitter. That is not who I want to be.

And so, yesterday, when the question about what would make me happy came up, the first answer that came to mind is one that is not possible in the current set of circumstances. And giving that response would not make it more possible. It would not make me happier. It would leave me wallowing in all the “what ifs”. So instead, I made a conscious choice, a choice to change my attitude, to set that answer aside, and instead give a different answer. I still gave an answer in two parts – one that I actually had power to implement, and one that, while I have significantly less control over it, is focused on moving forward instead of living in the past.

And that is my specific goal in the Introspection group this month, and also overall with this blog. Before I can truly find Serenity in accepting the things I cannot change, I need the courage and the wisdom to change my attitude.