The Serenity Prayer.

The Serenity Prayer .

You have probably come across this well-known prayer:

Lord grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can.
And the wisdom to know the difference.


Usually when I say this prayer, it will usually be at a time when I am unhappy about some aspect of life that I want to change. The prayer therefore helps me to see that unhappiness lies in the gap between the way life is and the way I want it to be.

The prayer then encourages me to ask for help to change one of two things. I either need help in actively changing something about the way life is. Or I need help in accepting that life cannot be as I want it to be.

If I decide to change what I can, then it requires me to act courageously in one way or another. The word "courage" reminds me that there will be inevitable obstacles and failures along this path that I must overcome.

If I decide that I cannot change the way life is, then the prayer guides me to ask for the serenity of surrendering my hopes in life. I am to pray for the serenity of accepting that it is OK to fail to achieve the life I wanted.

Of course it takes wisdom to decide which choice to make, but notice that on both paths of this simple prayer we need the courage or serenity to accept failures of one sort or another.