Reality Comes At You Fast – the Serenity Prayer
"Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."
Life has inevitable slings and arrows — inconveniences, wonkiness, accidents, other people doing things we don't think are right.
Reality is rarely ideal, and most of us carry a kind of low-grade, permanent resentment about this fact. Life be life-ing. People be people-ing. We want circumstances to be some other way. We want other people to want some other thing.
Wishing for a different reality does not make it so. The details of the world don't rearrange themselves because we'd prefer they did.
We will be in many situations where it seems we are misaligned with the world. Each one is a chance to stop and ask: how do we actually get the best outcome here? Answering the question honestly will usually land on one of two things — either we're trying to control something outside our wheelhouse; or some action is actually required of us. Sometimes we've already done that math, accepted the thing, taken the action. Sometimes we haven't.
So over and over, something in the shape of the serenity prayer shows up — to deal with a world that's fickle, selfish, and entropy-prone, by default. It is obvious. We agree it is important. We promise ourselves to apply the wisdom.
We handle the situation at hand the best we can, and life continues. And the next pickle arises. And we confirm once more that acceptance, courageous action, and discernment is what the situation needs more of.
The Next Level
Some number of “funk of life” situations down the road, we may make the observation that a “next level” of acceptance, courageous action, and discernment might be available. There’s got to be a better deal than default human nature. Perhaps we need to look at it: as “always building the muscles of acceptance, courageous action, and discernment, so our baseline capability when the bleep hits the fan is higher, and next time too."
Build a practice for that, and it compounds and builds upon itself. Not in a straight line — handling a bad Tuesday echoes to positive results three weeks later, in a situation not related to the first one. That's not a small upgrade; it's a different person showing up to the same life.
But: How?
A Deeper Truth, Always There
Before we suggest how to take acceptance, courageous action, and discernment further, and exercise them more powerfully in your life, an important fact:
The core ideas of the serenity prayer were laid out long before Reinhold Niebuhr gave us the version we all know in 1932. It turns out we are not the first people to wrestle with this.
The Serenity Prayer, Over and Over Across the Centuries
Epictetus opens the Enchiridion, around 100 AD, with the observation that some things are up to us, some things aren't. (Greek and Roman Stoicism plays with this idea in many other ways beyond this.) In 8th-century India, the Buddhist monk and poet Shantideva observed if a problem can be solved, there's no need to worry about it; and if it can't be solved, worrying does no good anyway; so worry is pointless either way. In 11th-century Andalusia in Muslim Spain, the Jewish philosopher and poet ibn Gabirol wrote a line: "Teach me to bear the things I cannot change." In old Mother Goose rhymes, one says: "For every evil under the sun, there is a remedy, or there is none; if there be one, try and find it; if there be none, never mind it." And in 1801, German philosopher Friedrich Schiller wrote an essay "On the Sublime," where he said: "Happy is he therefore, if he has learned to endure what he cannot change, and to surrender, with dignity, what he cannot save."
In five unconnected traditions, in four languages, over two thousand years, thinkers landed on the same set of ideas. This sticky part of your human existence, and a consistent recommendation of how to handle it, is pretty universal across cultures and time.
Obviously the exact wording of the Niebuhr’s serenity prayer isn’t the magic — implementing the ideas in actual lived life is what moves mountains.
Realizing the Potential – Stoicism
Right, let's get to the point.
A great path to getting so much more out of the serenity prayer: the practice of Stoicism.
Stoicism is built around acceptance, courageous action, and discernment as very key components. With this center, and other tenets that foster applying it to your whole life, it’s hard to go wrong.
This builds the muscles of the serenity prayer day in and day out – so on the tough days you’re accepting and taking courageous action and discerning, as a matter of course, and you end up five steps into your action plan, doing the thing, making adjustments — where maybe with your current approach you’re planning to level up acceptance and courage in the future.
(Social proof — Marcus Aurelius is remembered as one of the great Roman emperors — Stoicism is part of why.)
Stoicism is not the only path to deepen your application of the serenity prayer. But it is the one that got there first, wrote the most down, and kept working the idea for the longest.
Do the Work
StoicThingy is our brand. We commit to bring Stoicism to you in a way that is accessible, powerful, and perhaps challenging.
And — these products won't do the accepting, acting, or discerning for you — nobody can sell you that.
We offer this mug to keep acceptance and action in front of you, as a reminder of your commitment, day in and day out.
Stoicism is the O.G. Serenity Prayer - Mug
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Many cultures and traditions have expressed the ideas of the serenity prayer, well before Reinhold Niebuhr gave us the familiar version we know in 1932. But Stoicism did it first, way back in 100 A.D. And the ideas are quite… read more
At 6am, when you see a powerful idea from Epictetus on your wall about growing up — let the teacher of Marcus Aurelius motivate you more than the same quote you highlighted in a book ten years ago.
Epictetus' observations on growing up - glossy metal print
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As you ponder your role in a squirrelly world, journal in a notebook with the definition of courage or justice on the front.
Courage matters - hardcover bound notebook
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Justice is crucial - hardcover bound notebook
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Etcetera.
The work is still yours. We have a reminder (or a dozen) if you could use it.