The StepsThe serenity prayer has the phrase "the serenity to accept the things I cannot change." The word serene can mean "Suggestive of utter calm and unruffled repose", or "clear and free of storms or unpleasant change".
It is the ability to accept these things without letting them build up and create anger and pain, that we are striving for. This is a very difficult task. I want to have control over the actions that affect me. I want to be a part of the decision making process that determines these events.
Having someone else make the decisions that affect me is gauling, to say the least. It just stabs me. Why should so and so tell me what to do?
I'm not talking about commonly known social etiquittes or laws. I do not resent the fact that I cannot go out and rob a bank or shot someone without risking criminal proceedings, the possibility of fines or jail sentences.
Some of the most frustrating occurances are work related. How many times have I been told to do something I do not wish to do, or find unpleasent doing? How many decisions have been made by someone who is not directly involved with the work, and who cannot know that the request or instructions are unreasonable?
How much of my time has been wasted doing projects that are unproductive, do no real change, and only furthur the employees frustration with management and the decision makers?
How many jobs and responsibilities can be given to someone without their wishes or input being listened to before they become frustrated and angry. Leaving work at the end of the day and carrying around all the emotional tourmoil that go with it is not very healthy.
This was always a good excuse to drink. "They're all boneheads. I don't like the stress, so I'll relieve it by getting drunk." This often seemed like a particularly good way of dealing with these problems.
Get off work, get a twelve pack, go home and complain about work to my spouse. After enough booze, it didn't matter what was going on at work, you are "comfortably numb", and you don't have to deal with it now.
Of course, the "problem" did not go away. When you get back to work the next day it is still there, the only differecne being that now you are hung over.
Another big area needing serenity is my inability to accept the fact that I cannot make certain people do things that they do not want to.
Specifically - children. My children. I know that my situation is not unique, every parent must at some time or another get frustrated with the fact that their children do not do as they are asked, or told.
But when you are telling them to do something "for their own good", or to complete a task which they have been assigned, and the look at you as if youre speaking some foreign language, and no no comprehension of what it is you are saying, it is very difficult to accept the fact that you cannot change their behavior.
This is an area that lends itself to be continued in the next generation, a child who has an inflexible parent, will probably be an inflexible parent themself.
This is a situation I have been trying hard to work on. But not by trying hard. By letting go. I cannot change it, things will happen, that I have no control over, so it is best to go with the flow and not fight a battle that you cannot win. Even when you know you are right.
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