Help in Three Buckets

I say the serenity prayer pretty often. Some days I think I get it, like really get it, and can apply it to my life, and it’s like, “Oh duh, of course! Great I feel so much better!” Then some days I realize I’m still freaking clueless and I’m like, “Accept? Change? Difference?” I can say the words, but I’m not sure what to DO. Here’s the prayer, as a refresher:

“Gd, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.”

So it’s a two or three-bucket kind of organizational system: 1) Things I Can’t Change, 2) Things I Can Change, 3) Things I Don’t Know Which Bucket to put into. There are some low-hanging I Can’t Change things – the behavior and personality of my parents, my husband, my neighbors. And some low-hanging, obvi I Can Change things – my hair color, my behavior, my thoughts about something or someone, what I eat after dinner, whether or not I continue to hang out with that person.

And then the murkier stuff I guess goes in category three, stuff I need help to know the difference about. Like what about that condo development they’re proposing to put up behind our house? The official process says that as neighbors we have the right to object, to influence what happens. So that’s what I can do. I can keep showing up and defending our home at public meetings. That’s bucket two stuff.

But ultimately, whatever results, will be bucket one stuff. Me no likey. I’d like to know that my actions are tied to the results I will get. That seems like a fundamental kind of truth kind of thing. Like Ax just started taking karate and it’s lined up just like that: If you practice you will earn a stripe on your belt, then another stripe, then another, and then at some point that white belt will turn into a white and yellow belt, and on and on. He’s fired up. He knows what he has to do to get what he wants and he can do it.

Life is not like kiddie karate, it seems. I do stuff, and the outcome is uncertain. Someone has proposed to build a big condo behind our house – that’s a bucket 1, accept it, item. What it looks like, whether it actually will happen, is still up for grabs and there is a process for me to participate in to influence that. So how I show up in that space – an angry mama lioness, a bedraggled bunny, a determined, persistent, yet pleasant and stunningly beautiful powerhouse – that’s bucket 2. I’m gonna keep going.