"Accept the things I cannot change and change the things I can."

Brian Lynch

This is a short version of Reinhold  Niebuhr’s prayer that is used in the “AA” or alcoholics Anonymous movement.

The other day the meaning of the prayer became much clearer to me in terms of how I try and help people go about clarifying their daily lives.

It seems that many of the serious problems people have are precisely because of issues in their life that cannot be solved. We all have them. We all, for example, know we are going to die. We all know we have to pay taxes. We all know others will die. What we are not fully aware of is how we handle this knowledge. We do not realize that we might be wasting our lives trying to avoid death and not living. We might not realize that because we lost, for example, a parent when we were eight years old that we are still trying to “solve” that problem and that is  taking up almost every moment of our life even though we are fifty.  Since the problems are unsolvable it is “beating ones head against the wall” and yet we just do not realize what we are doing and since it is unsolvable we do something else: we  get angry at the world, destroy our business, family, take drugs, just “give up.”

So the point is the “prayer” points out a very important truth. What can we do? I think it begs us to work very hard to see our lives in a new light; that which is possible and that which is not.

Sometimes something can be done. A toxic relationship with a parent or sibling just might be able to be healed. If things have gone on for years and they have consumed your life take steps to test the waters. If, however, the other party is unable to respond, and continues to hurt you, evaluate. There are two ways to go. You can now go back to old habits which will continue to magnify. Things will get worse as things feed on themselves or through a window of opportunity, that you are now creating, one might realize that we can change albeit the other might not be ready to. Is all hope lost for the other? No. Why? Because often, when we really change others often change but this takes time and commitment. This becomes a new life of sorts, not the “old life” not the old dynamic.

Brian Lynch