Serenity 2.0

A little research into the famous "Serenity Prayer" reveals that the version you're familiar with is no good because it's missing a key ingredient. Here's the standard:

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

And here's the beginning of the original (it actually runs on a little bit more, but this is the relevant bit):

God, give me grace to accept with Serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

Did you notice the difference? Hopefully you did because I underlined it and put it in bold. It's this: just because you can change something doesn't necessarily mean that you should.

Taking a step back... there's no way to know for sure whether something cannot be changed. As Americans, we believe anything is possible -- I mean, we put people on the moon! In theory, if you were to invest enough time, or money, or effort, or brains, or whatever, you could accomplish anything, right? And even if you fail, that still doesn't prove change is impossible.

The wisdom to know the objective distinction between things that cannot be changed and things that can is only part of the equation. After we've accepted all the things that cannot be changed, we're still left with a virtually infinite pile of things that can (at least theoretically) be changed.

Viewed in such light, the standard version of the prayer becomes a trite and absurd exhortation to pursue meaningless change for its own sake. What's missing is the follow-up question: should the thing be changed?

I've made a flow chart of the complete Serenity/Courage/Wisdom process. You should probably print it out and hang it up on your refrigerator or something.

The addition of the "should" question allows us to actually get somewhere with all of this. Really, it's an economic problem -- our task is to evaluate the potential payoff of the proposed change against the costs and risks associated with our attempt at changing it.

If at this point we decide it's not worth changing, might as well lump it in with everything else we've already serenely accepted.

But if we decide it is worth changing, we are finally ready to plunge into the realm of beautiful, romantic, Quixotic courage. Indeed, as soon as such a decision has been made, the outcome of our efforts becomes irrelevant -- all that matters is that we're going for it!

Per Cervantes:

Demasiada cordura puede ser la peor de las locuras, ver la vida como es y no como debería de ser.

[Too much sanity can be the worst kind of madness, to see life as it is and not as it should be.]