One of the most famous Christian prayers of the modern era is the so-called Serenity Prayer.

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

This, in a nutshell is the Stoic ideal of a life well lived. The difference from the way that we typically read this prayer and the great minds of Stoicism is that by "courage to change the things I can", the Stoics would have meant "focus only on those things that are under your complete control". The Stoic ideal is to live life as if it were Sinead O'Connor's album title, "I Do Not Want What I haven't Got". All those things that are outside of our purview of control are things we cannot control.

And that is a hard truth.

What, really, is under our control? As an amateur triathlete, I know full well that even our bodies are not fully under our control. I cannot control my genetic disposition for blood clots. I will my body to continue in motion after it has depleted all of its energy reserves and I am physically incapable of sucking in more oxygen.

And even parts of my mind are outside of my control. When my blood sugar drops and I get cranky and irritable, I am not always capable of preventing myself from snapping.

And when I lost my wife, I was not able to control the grief and pain that washed over me.

Nor was I able to control the series of events that led to her death.

Those ideas are not something that I like to ponder. My mind wants to leap into a revolving door of "what if" narratives. What if I had left for work just 10 minutes later on that day? What if I had treated her differently those last ten years of our marriage? What if? What if? What if? My mind can find a "what if" scenario for just about everything.

The truth of the matter is that I did not choose this. It lies outside of my control. And even my reaction to it is only partially under my control. It would seem that the path to healing is to take stock of just what things are under my actual control; to give up the illusion of control in those situations where I do not have it; to seize control in those situations where I do have a real choice.

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