The Serenity Prayer: Part One

In a three part series, I will breakdown and look at the Serenity Prayer and how Stoic philosophy can be used to live this cornerstone prayer of recovery to its fullest potential.

To accept the things I cannot change

In stoicism, the idea of understanding what are the things that are inside and outside of your control is crucial in order to build a life that allows for you to balance your emotions and create a life of thoughtful, decisive and virtuous action. That we as human beings can often times find ourselves absorbed in things outside of our control and that this can be slippery road. Not only am I not getting things done if I am stuck thinking about things that I have no control over, but it is this inability to accept the things we cannot change that can often times lead us into negative thoughts and feelings. For us in recovery, negative thoughts and feelings can often times be the trigger or path to relapse.

What We Cannot Change

The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can clearly say to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with choices I actually control.

Epictetus – Discourses: 2.5

For Stoics, the things we cannot change are going to be often discussed as externals that are beyond and outside of our power. And the reality of life is that we are surrounded with a world each day that we have very little control over. Our goal needs to be identifying the things that are external to us so we can grow to accept them, decreasing their impact on us. We have the power to choose how we will respond to things outside of our control but also focus our energy and effort on what we do control (which will be discussed in the second part of this series). I will discuss things we cannot change (externals) in three broad categories of: time, events and people. I will conclude with a brief discussion on the role of fate in all of this.

Time

Life is divided in three periods – that which has been, that which is, that which will be. Of these the present time is short, the future is doubtful, the past is certain.

Seneca – On the Shortness of Life – X

When it comes to time the only thing we have control over is the present moment. The future and the past are both externals that can affect us in different ways. The problem with living in the future for us in recovery is that it can cause depression or anxiety if we want things to happen but they are not happening fast enough or the way we want them. We live in a world of instant gratification always wanting the efforts that we put into something to allow for us to enjoy the fruits of our labor ASAP. We may have ruined things in our addiction but now that we are sober shouldn’t we see things getting better with what’s going on in our lives? The future will always be doubtful and there is no changing that. Things can change any given day that can stir up the future that you have envisioned. So do not put too much weight on the future because it is not in your control and never will be. If you can release yourself from future thinking you can free yourself of the emotions of worry and anticipation.

The past is also beyond our control and this is key for those in recovery. “The past is certain”, it is said and done and there is no changing that. We have to accept it and move on. Seneca even calls our past an “everlasting possession” that we will always own but cannot change. But he warns if you let your past take hold of you…it will and it will keep its hold onto you as it drags you down into a dark abyss. We must learn our past is our external, we cannot succumb to it because no matter what we cannot make it disappear.

Therefore, when it comes to time we need to focus our minds on not living in the past (since it is done) and stop future projecting (since the future will always be the future and never in our control).

Events

Think of those days that you perfectly plan out? How often do they play out perfectly? We live in a world of external events that we cannot control. Is there a car accident on the way to work that caused a traffic jam? Is there a change in weather that turns a sunny day into a cloudy one? Does an unforeseen emergency happen with a family or friend? Natural disasters happen at the whim of nature with no human control guiding them.

You getting the job or not is up to the person hiring. You getting the promotion or not is up to your boss. Whoever the person is that is running the government you live under could be up to a number of outside forces. Whether you win the lottery or not is up to a machine. Whether you are sick or healthy could be determined by genetics, a microscopic disease getting inside of you or your body responding on its own to life choices (I think of my father dying from cancer in his fifties and people who have lived well beyond his age with the same habit).

When things happen in your life each day take a moment and wonder is this something outside of your control that you just have to learn to accept it as it is?

People

Say to yourself first thing in the morning: today I shall meet people who are meddling, ungrateful, aggressive, treacherous, malicious, unsocial. All this has afflicted them through their ignorance of true good and evil.

Marcus Aurelius – Meditations: 2.1

This well known quote by Marcus Aurelius illustrates what we need to have as our mindset with dealing with others. There are just negative people in the world and you can do nothing about them. And really what he is getting at in the second part is these people are often ignorant in their own ways. But the real point of what this says, just prepare yourself to deal with people difficult to deal with. If you know any person that acts in any of the ways he listed, shouldn’t you expect them to act that way when you see them again? We only have control over our own behaviors, we have zero control over that of others (everyone makes their own choices). This includes: their actions, their thoughts and even their opinions of you.

The importance of understanding we cannot change or control people for us in recovery is when it comes to relationships we have. Many of us have destroyed our families, friends and relationships. We can find it difficult in sobriety to deal with the fact that some of these people do not come around to us again. Or maybe someone did not accept the amends that was trying to be made. We have zero control over whether people we have driven away in our addictions will come back in our recovery and this is a reality we have to face and accept. Other people are an external and they have power over their actions and not us.

Fate

Fate, to Stoics, becomes the driving force beneath all of these externals that act upon us. Early Stoics viewed this fate as being a force that comes from God or the gods (they were Greek). However, other Stoics have viewed this fate as being a force of the universe itself. That the universe has rules and patterns that guide it and that as we are a part of the universe, we have our own place in these patterns. No matter what your belief is, the idea in the end is ultimately there is a power greater than us guiding all of these external things and we have to learn to accept them because they are beyond our control. It comes down to that wonderful saying of “it is what it is”.

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