“Serenity Now!”
“Letting go” is an underrated action
Of all the meaningful totems1 I’ve collected, the most significant ones are mental. A physical totem is there to trigger a memory. A mental totem is etched into your brain. Mental totems invade every aspect of your life, in the best kind of way. One of my best examples of a mental totem is my Mom’s Prayer of Serenity wall art.
The only family home I remember is on Teddington Drive in Richmond, Virginia. I was four years old when we moved into this house. I have no memory of the house on Covey Street where we had lived before. The closest memory I have is walking out the door to the Covey house and getting in our station wagon … on the day we were moving.
Mom had a piece of wall art that she hung above the kitchen sink the day we moved in. And it stayed there until the day she moved out, 40 years later.
Mom loved this prayer. Mom lived this prayer. When we cleaned out our family home before selling it, my sister Ann claimed this art and it is now hanging in her kitchen. I don’t have a physical reminder. But given how much I saw Mom demonstrating it, I didn’t need it. This prayer is etched into my brain, and onto my heart.
Prayer of Serenity
God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and the Wisdom to know the difference.
The Prayer of Serenity has been adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous, as it perfectly captures the struggle we face in life to control what we can control and to let go of the rest. My family’s genes gave us a proclivity to addiction (accept). My father’s biggest addiction was alcohol. Mine is video games. Pop overcame his drinking (courage). I’m doing alright managing my video games (courage in progress).
Your overall effectiveness as an individual comes down to how well you can recognize what things you can change and what things you can’t change, and then how well you can direct all of your energy to what you can change. This is Stephen Covey’s first habit in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”2. Habit #1 is called “Be Proactive”, where Covey introduces the two circles: the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence.
