On False Serenity
In which I argue with a dead theologian
You’ve seen this before:
God, 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.
It’s the Serenity Prayer as told by Reinhold Niebuhr in the 1950s. I’ve heard it. You’ve heard it. Your mom’s heard it. What’s the big deal?
There are other versions (better versions), but this is the one that got picked up by both Hallmark and Alcoholics Anonymous, so it is the one that is circulated most widely.
To be fair, there is a kernel of a great truth in this old chestnut. There is no point in fighting against that which truly cannot be changed. No one picks a fight with physics and wins.
But this particular phrasing has a framing that undermines any value it could otherwise offer. Do you see it?
I.
Things I can change. Things I cannot change.
I am just one person. My voice is small, and my power is limited. There are a lot of problems I can’t solve.
You are just one person. Your voice is small, and your power is limited. There are a lot of problems you can’t solve.
When language shrinks our actions and our power down to “I” it does two things: First, it robs us of our greatest power. Second, it urges us to acquiesce to that which is truly unacceptable.
As someone who prefers to spend most of my time alone, I promise you that the actual secret to anything humans have ever done that is worth anything of value came from a community, not an individual.
We are social animals to the very core of our being, and when we are robbed of “we”, robbed of “us”, and reduced to “I” or “me”, we lose the vast majority of our power. There is, truly, very little that you or I could possibly accomplish on our own, even if we devoted our entire life to that cause.
But if you and I band together and become we? We can get some traction. We can build momentum. And the more people who join this we, the more power we have.
The idea that we are somehow a conglomeration of isolated “I’s”, each one separate and responsible for only what each one can do, is false. It’s a narrative that undermines us, blinds us to friends and allies, robs us of our power, and teaches us that we are too small, too weak to make a difference.
This is an idea that serves the very people who are running our whole damn planet into the, uh, ground. It doesn’t serve you or me at all.
Find we. You can still be your own self, but you will no longer be limited by your own knowledge or abilities or resources. When we come together, we get to use the best each of us has to offer, and it has a way of almost alchemically forming into something much, much greater than the parts.
It can be slow, but it is real.
Where, you might ask, does one look for we in this fractured and fragmented world? Some we does exist in these little rectangles you, I, and everyone else we know has a habit of staring at too much, but the best forms of we tend to exist outside the realm of that blue electronic glow.
What about this world, about our current moment, do you find unacceptable? What do you find so big and scary that it makes you want to hide under the bedcovers and cry?
Who else cares about that? Is there a group? Are there some individuals you know, even tangentially? You may need to ask around, talk with actual humans. Much of where we have power is, quite literally, close to home. And local information is very seldom googlable.
The more you talk about what is on your mind, with other humans in real life, the more chances you have of finding like-minded individuals. When you come together, you form a we. Now our power is greater than yours or mine ever was. When another learns of what we are doing and joins in, that power multiplies.
I will not change this world. I will not solve its problems, even the ones that truly must be solved.
You will not changes this world. You will not solve its problems, even the ones that truly must be solved.
But we? I think we’ve got a shot.