Sunday 13 April 2014

An Ode to Serenity Prayer : Blog # 171

An Ode to Serenity Prayer


          Many of us pray, don’t we? We all have varied reasons for saying our prayers. For some, it’s out of fear; for some, it’s out of reverence and for many amongst us, it’s out of sheer habit. Having been exposed to varied forms of prayers (thanks to my schooling under varied religious trusts), I have noticed a couple of things. Mostly, a prayer is a note of thanks to a higher power. Many a time, it is asking for forgiveness and it also becomes an earnest supplication for protection at times.


            Since prayer largely concerns our ‘self’, we tend to lack objectivity. This is the reason why we commit the gravest of sins and have the audacity to ask for forgiveness. This is why we reach out to the higher power only in times of need and conveniently forget otherwise. This serenity prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr that I came across made a lot of sense and I think that objectivity is what makes it so unique and universal.

It goes like this:

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

            This prayer addresses our world and thus our lives in to two – that which can be changed and that which cannot be. Through my eyes, I see it as a prayer to help us to do away with the feeling of ‘regret’ in our lives. I look at ‘regret’ as cancer to spirit of our soul.

We regret about things that could have been done differently. Do not mistake regret with repentance. There is learning involved in repenting because in that state, we learn from our mistakes and thus strive to become better beings. In ‘regretting’, all we are doing is putting ourselves in to misery due to an occurrence from the past which cannot be undone. These are among things that we cannot change.

In the second line, again it implores for power to not get in to the downward spiral of regret is what I feel. It asks for the strength of mind to go ahead and do things which one is capable of. It implores within to make a difference in the lives of one self and of others. It asks for courage to not hold back when one is capable of doing something noble. Largely, we are asking to be blessed with contentment when we look back in Life.

It is said we worry mostly about the eventualities that never happen in reality. We think in our own mind about things that could go wrong and the repercussions there of. We should know what is worth fretting about and what’s not. Hence the need for wisdom to know the difference between both.

Don’t you think these three lines of prayer embody our journey of Life in itself?

Arun Babu

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