Mark Wenz
All people have moments when they wish their lives could be different than they are–perhaps because they perceive themselves as unlucky or mistreated and their lives as mundane or painful. However, is this desire to wish for an easier life helpful or harmful to one’s spirit?
I looked for answers to this question in some of my favorite texts. One of these was Reinhold Niebuhr’s “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.” These wise words relate the truth that we sometimes–but not always–can change our lives through our own volition. An example from my own life occurred when I desired to change my occupation from food service to teaching but ran into a few closed doors along the way. Rather than bemoan my fate and give up, I continued to persevere (believing I had the power to change things) while accepting the fact that the road to change might be difficult and disappointing along the way.
I can apply Baba Ram Dass’s advice to “Be Here Now” to the same experience. Rather than focusing on the past (“I didn’t get the job I wanted, so what’s the point?”) or the future (“I won’t be happy until I get a teaching job!”), I accepted my circumstances and decided to start substitute teaching and do the best job I could in the present moment whenever I was serving students. This strategy to accept my fate and “be here now” resulted in my eventual hiring in the Kyrene School District where I taught for 33 years.
Some of us bemoan the state of our country, arguing that this president or that president or the liberals/conservatives are ruining our country, and in the process, we separate ourselves from people who may have different opinions than we do and judge those on the other side of the fence as being somehow inferior to ourselves. Matthew counsels us in his gospel to “Judge not, that ye be not judged” (Matthew, 7:1), which, in my interpretation, is a prescription to accept yourself and others for who they are and to find common ground among those with disparate views.
In his seminal book The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck writes, “Life is difficult.//This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths (The first of the Four Noble Truths which Buddha taught was ‘Life is suffering.’). It is a great truth, because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult–once we truly understand and accept it–then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”
So, let’s accept ourselves and our circumstances–along with others and their circumstances–with gratitude and grace, believing that where we are is exactly where we were meant to be at this moment in time.