Looking down the cliff

Although I am not openly spiritual, I still sympathize from a philosophical point of view with the famous Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr. Immersed as we are in the culture of voluntarism, mixing together fake aphorisms like "if you want, you can" and "winners never quit", it is very refreshing to come to terms with the fact that some things just cannot be changed and the only way around them is to accept them as they are. 

Today after lunch Jason realized that, after two weeks of school break, Monday will be back to the daily routine, and was overwhelmed by the foreboding. Not only will he have a much more regulated timetable, but the next batch of exams are looming in the not-so-distant future and catching up with the studying is going to take time and work.

Photo: pxfuel

It is painful to see someone you love in pain, and yet I found it interesting to see him struggle with the situation: on the one hand, he was perfectly aware that it was inescapable; on the other he dreaded the upcoming amount of work and would have loved if it disappeared "auto-magically". In this case I managed to quench his worries a bit by pointing out that he had indeed been studying all along, so the real amount of study left was probably a lot less than he anticipated. I also mentioned that, in any case, you cannot make the exams go away but sheer will, so your only option, as in the prayer is to accept the things that cannot change. It is, in some sense, very similar to the skydiver that gets cold feet on their first jump: they can overcome their fear and do the jump or stay in the plane and skip the jump, but they cannot claim the credit for the jump without jumping.

The other idea that I have always tried to transmit is that the enjoyment of the path is an essential part of the success: this does not mean that one should only take the pleasant path and avoid the difficult one, but success can be elusive and whatever path one takes might not lead them where they want to go, so one has to find some joy along the way too, in case the final reward cannot be obtained.

Does this posture mean that you try with less intensity? Not necessarily. Think of an athlete at the gym, training day in and day out: the training is probably excruciating and the rewards can take months or years to come and yet, going to bed in the evening, they feel some level of accomplishment by the fact that they have trained one more day. The tiredness of their muscles bears witness to the effort they have made and at the same time confirms that the goal has been achieved for the day.

I hope you find the wisdom to tell the immutable things form the ones you can change, and the strength to set the change in motion. Have a nice evening.