For the past 33 years or so, I’ve been guided by the Serenity Prayer when baffled or confused. So, you know, daily. I often use the short version of the prayer when pressed. I’ll share it with you. It’s handy to have when someone’s been snippy, or if an asshat cuts you off in traffic. In those times of little patience or time to speed talk your way through:
God Grant me the Serenity to
Accept the things I cannot change
Courage to change the things I can
And the Wisdom to know the difference.
You can use the short version, and just say “Oh, well.” And that covers it.
This week as we finally (finally!) stop being in the month of March and proceed into April (which surely won’t be as long, right?) I realized that during this pandemic I’ve been forcing myself to adhere to one part of that prayer, the changing things I can section. Granted, it’s my default position. Coming from a long line of pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstrappers whose mindset of “make it happen” is practically a religion, it’s hard not to try and muscle my way through things. The far side of that behavior is intense manipulation of others to get what you want, which isn’t pleasant for anyone. It also leads to never being good enough. A sticky wicket, in other words. (Have you also been watching way too much Brit Box during quarantine?)
Three weeks into this thing, and never once achieving all the things on the daily to-do list, I’ve realized that gripping onto the “changing things I can” portion of the serenity prayer isn’t working. It’s forced me into using my short version of the Serenity Prayer multiple times per day. I can’t change other people’s behavior; they will still congregate and have “quarantine parties.” Oh, well. My son’s college graduation will be postponed until next year. Oh, well. I can’t even get my 85 and 90-year-old parents to stay in their house. They’ve nicknamed me “The Warden,” and while they say it with a half-smile on their face, they resent the hell out of me, and sneak out and do inconsequential errands anyway. Oh, well. I can only change my own behavior.
Accepting things I cannot change feels unnatural, a lesser choice, the coward’s way out. The thought that if I tried harder something could be done gnaws like a rat behind the wall. It’s a struggle to accept things as they are and not try and fix them. It feels like losing. Yet its where peace is found. Accepting things is to see them clearly, and that’s when a path forward is revealed. It’s a gentler path than I’m used to walking. It includes fuzzy thinking, and naps in the afternoon, and not getting everything on my to-do list done. Very few of us currently alive on this planet have navigated a global pandemic before, so perhaps we can accept that and then move forward instead of making ourselves crazy with what could’ve been done, or what we should be doing.
I think that’s what is meant by giving yourself grace. Being in acceptance is understanding that going for strolls in your neighborhood is enough, I don’t need to jog the whole time. My dog loves those walks. No need to rearrange all the closets today. Maybe just the one shelf. Acceptance means I stop comparing myself to others, too. I love seeing clever people on Facebook making up new pandemic words to Disney songs and dressing up, so we all can laugh. It’s okay to just laugh and appreciate the gift of it, I don’t need to do one too. Besides, you for sure don’t want to hear me sing. I accepted that one back in 2nd grade.
On my long ambles through the neighborhood I see all sorts of gardens. There are apartments with cheery little window pots all the way up to huge 12,000 square foot homes that have immaculate gardens and clipped hedges formed into mazes. My personal garden consists of two small pear sprouts and another little plant on the floor of my living room. The baby pear trees have a good story behind them. They’re from a single pear produced by a long-suffering tree that sat in a pot for at least two years too long at our old rental house in Johnson City. It made a few hopeful green leaves each spring but no fruit. It endured the winters huddled against the side of the house. It’d lost most of its upper branches to some sort of black rot. But it was hanging in there, and as I’m sentimental about living things, we tossed it on the back of the truck last-minute when we moved to Dallas.
We dropped it off at my parent’s house before taking the rest of our things to the apartment, so it survived The Fire. They planted it in their yard. It sat in its new home doing very little for a year, not dejected exactly, just tired from the move and the strangeness of having its roots unencumbered by pot sides. Perhaps learning to accept its new place. Last year the little tree rallied and with a massive effort produced a single, perfect pear. My mom and I shared it when it got ripe, before the birds got it, and to the little tree’s credit, it was sweet and delicious.
I saved the two viable seeds from it, and stored them in a baggie filled with dirt in my fridge for four months like I saw on a YouTube video. The two seeds had just started sprouting when I planted them at the end of January in the pots in my living room and watered and sunned them regularly. Now we have two baby pear trees making leaves and growing very slowly. But growing they are. I talk to them daily and tell them they are the very best pear trees in my living room, and they seem to like that. Just having them there makes me happy, and reminds me one more time that we are indeed human beings, not human doings, and that accepting things I cannot change just might be okay for today.
