the untitled prayer
God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things that should be changed,
And the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Written by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. It is unclear whether he wrote it in the 1930’s or the 1940’s. Either way, it has been adapted by 12-Step Groups.
You don’t have to be a member of any 12-Step Group to understand that the only person you can change is yourself. That’s what this prayer is declaring. You only have control over your mind – no one else’s. Any parent will tell you that. Can you get a loud, stubborn 4-year old to listen in public when they’re having a tantrum, without brute force or threats? Obviously, some cannot.
We all have ideas how people should or shouldn’t be conducting their lives; we just don’t always like it when they tell us what we should or shouldn’t be doing with our own. Double standard? You bet, but that’s human nature. And sometimes it’ll make us frustrated and nasty when someone we love (even someone we dislike!) is conducting their lives in a manner which we feel is ridiculous. Oh well, let’s talk about them over coffee instead, okay? Perhaps we should mind our own business instead. Maybe that’s what Reinhold had in mind when he wrote the untitled prayer. Maybe he had an epiphany about his own life. We may never know. But we do know that this little prayer packs a powerhouse of wisdom.
So, here’s a breakdown of this prayer, line by line:
Line 1 – you ask for grace and peace to be aware that there are things in this world that you have absolutely no control over.
Line 2 – Okay, so now you know that as long as you’re aware of the things you can change, you need grit to begin that change: the push, the shove, the firecracker under your butt that gets you into gear to start.
Line 3 – The hard part. Enough brains to know what you can change and what you can’t. And what you cannot change includes everything outside your head.
And that folks is it in a nutshell. Godspeed to you in getting your head around this. This is another one of my daily struggles, but so worth it.
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