Drabble: Wisdom to know the difference
One of my favorite quotes is the 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."
I feel as if this is one of the most profound lines I have ever encountered, and it has enough distilled wisdom in it to base your entire life upon. The doctrine is seemingly simple: There are things in your realm, and then there are things beyond your control. You can change the former, but the latter you have to make your peace with. The catch is here though: It is futile to attempt to change what you cannot, and foolish to reconcile yourself to a state of things that can easily be changed. Before you take any action, therefore, you must first analyze and classify. And for this, you need wisdom.
It sounds easy enough in theory. Two buckets: Change it, Live with it. Toss anything into appropriate bucket. But when it comes to real life, you most often get stuck at the wisdom part. It is tough to differentiate, because the distinction isn't crystal clear. Sometimes, it becomes about your choice. You can choose to change it, or accept it and move ahead. And those are the most pesky of situations. You are stuck in limbo, wondering which bucket to toss it into. Once you toss it, it becomes easy though. If you choose to live with it, you pretend to yourself that it's an immovable mountain and restructure your entire life around it with no regrets. If you choose to change it, you congratulate yourself for having taken the initiative to challenge the status quo. But making this decision, you see, therein lies the problem. As long as you don't choose, both remain possible. And yet, only one of them can be. Schrodinger's cat comes to mind.
How do you stumble upon this wisdom then? I'm no saint, so I can't give you enlightenment. I think it comes with time. As you go on living life, your algorithm has a bigger dataset to learn from, and its decisions get more accurate. At least, that's the hope. :)
P.S: Looking back, everything seems so easy to classify. I think "You could have easily changed that" or "It was stupid to bang your head against that wall." But in the present moment, that clarity is a rare gift. The wisdom to know the difference. Indeed. Bless me with that. I have a feeling everything else will follow.
I feel as if this is one of the most profound lines I have ever encountered, and it has enough distilled wisdom in it to base your entire life upon. The doctrine is seemingly simple: There are things in your realm, and then there are things beyond your control. You can change the former, but the latter you have to make your peace with. The catch is here though: It is futile to attempt to change what you cannot, and foolish to reconcile yourself to a state of things that can easily be changed. Before you take any action, therefore, you must first analyze and classify. And for this, you need wisdom.
It sounds easy enough in theory. Two buckets: Change it, Live with it. Toss anything into appropriate bucket. But when it comes to real life, you most often get stuck at the wisdom part. It is tough to differentiate, because the distinction isn't crystal clear. Sometimes, it becomes about your choice. You can choose to change it, or accept it and move ahead. And those are the most pesky of situations. You are stuck in limbo, wondering which bucket to toss it into. Once you toss it, it becomes easy though. If you choose to live with it, you pretend to yourself that it's an immovable mountain and restructure your entire life around it with no regrets. If you choose to change it, you congratulate yourself for having taken the initiative to challenge the status quo. But making this decision, you see, therein lies the problem. As long as you don't choose, both remain possible. And yet, only one of them can be. Schrodinger's cat comes to mind.
How do you stumble upon this wisdom then? I'm no saint, so I can't give you enlightenment. I think it comes with time. As you go on living life, your algorithm has a bigger dataset to learn from, and its decisions get more accurate. At least, that's the hope. :)
P.S: Looking back, everything seems so easy to classify. I think "You could have easily changed that" or "It was stupid to bang your head against that wall." But in the present moment, that clarity is a rare gift. The wisdom to know the difference. Indeed. Bless me with that. I have a feeling everything else will follow.
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