Jimmy's Oasis

The Serenity Prayer

Jimmy Chen -
"God, 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." -Reinhold Niebuhr

Often, we might experience unnecessary stress when we focus on things we cannot change and neglect things we can change.

Some examples of things we cannot change:

  • There was a typhoon earlier this week that canceled our flight.
  • The GRE we registered for was canceled due to the pandemic.
  • The stock market dropped significantly this year.

For these situations beyond our control, we can refer to my logical framework from an earlier post and realize that the appropriate response is acceptance.

Trying to change it is futile, and feeling bad about it doesn't help - but we often still do these things. Hence, the prayer that we have the serenity for acceptance.

Examples of things we can change:

  • Work towards better cardiovascular health and lose weight.
  • Save more of our income and diversify our investments.
  • Spend an extra hour per day working on our application essays and interview preparation.

I wrote previously that I am better at avoiding or running away from problems than solving them. I'd say that most people are similar in this regard. Hence, the prayer that we would have the courage to enact change.

I realize that we cannot immediately change everything that's wrong in our lives. What we can do is recognize what can be changed, make a list of priorities, and work on the problems that are most important to us.

I think the third part of the Serenity Prayer is the most insightful. Wisdom is different from intelligence. Most of us have the intellectual capacity to categorize what can be changed and what cannot. However, our rational intelligence is often not involved when we respond to bad situations.

When a reckless driver cuts in front of us, or the waitress gets our lunch order wrong, or it suddenly began to rain and we don't have an umbrella, or there's no more milk in the fridge - often, our first response is an instinctual feeling of stress and a heated desire to fight or complain. In essence, we spend more than a moment to entertain such urges not because we're not smart enough, but because we're not yet wise enough.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we were wise enough? The wisdom to know the difference - fortunately, this is something we can change.