Serenity Prayer

There's an interpretation of the serenity prayer that serves as reality check for me.

It goes like this:

God Grant me the Serenity to Accept the things I cannot change (everything outside myself)
Grant me the Courage to change the things I can (me)
And the Wisdom to know the difference (between everything outside myself and me)

It seems to cut down on the complaining, whining, criticizing and denying and bring the focus to what am I doing to cause this situation. What can I do to change myself, to take action (not talk), to do something about it, how might my thinking and my feelings be what are limiting me from seeing what I need to do differently. How can I learn from this situation. How can I avoid this situation or this thinking or this feeling. How can I stop this negativity and paranoia.
Paranoia is that feeling that the world is a frightening place and that people are out to get me. How can I count my blessings always. How can I pray unceasingly. How can I have gratitude even for the negative because the negative is what corrects my behavior and helps me to grow to a fuller understanding of my experience. Action is becoming politically involved, volunteering physically to join a cause rather than justcomplaining about it. It's always about making commitments and commitments are painful. Joining political parties requires getting out of the comfort zone of my isolation and serving my fellows by my reliable attendance. Being of value to others requires my commitment to being there for them most especially when I don't want to be. I have to recognize that my putting my 'feelings', "my comfort zone' at a high bar is a means whereby I can stay in attitude of superiority. Physically being with others challenges all my preconceptions and brings home how much I criticize others to keep myself at a safe distance. So often my 'safety' is just paranoia by a different name and rank indulgence. The older I get the more I realize how self indulgent I am and the serenity prayer helps me realize that the first job is changing myself. That's real work. Criticizing others and expecting others to change especially when I don't or claim I can't is bullying and immature.

Today I 'm going to try to be a better person than I was yesterday. Maybe I'll work on being more patient and do less awfulizing.


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