Volume 7 · The Long Afternoon · Essay 241

Serenity Prayer

You may not know the name Serenity Prayer, but you know the thing. This page only introduces the two of you formally.

The idea is simple, and like most simple ideas it is easy to nod at and hard to use. The nod is free. The use costs attention, every day, in small change.

What this concept offers is a pause — one extra beat between what happens and what you do about it. Civilisation, someone said, is measured in that beat.

At the cremation ground, every speech is honest and every ambition sounds smaller. Then the bus takes everyone back to the city, and by Tuesday the lesson is negotiable again.

In the end, life asks only whether we were awake while it happened. The idea has done its job if, the next time it happens to you, you smile before you react.