The serenity prayer is, without doubt, one of the most useful — tools, ideas, comforts, guides, whatever you want to call it — that I’ve gotten from my recovery. Like most profound truths, it could hardly be more simple, and yet there is a lifetime of guidance in those few lines.

However, it isn’t guidance that I was able to accept while I was still active in my addictions. Addicts, alcholics and codependents don’t really have the capacity to deal with inaction (which is what, in most cases, the Serenity Prayer mandates). We want to be doing something, making things go our way — starting with the control of our surroundings and extending to other people and our inner environment as well. We want to be humans doing, not humans being.

I controlled emotions and setbacks with booze and drugs. I attempted to control my wife and kids in a variety of ways — practically all of which were doomed to failure. I tried to manipulate the other aspects of my life in such as way as to facilitate my drinking and drugging, with varied levels of success that led eventually to a collapse of the house of cards I’d built.

When I got into early recovery, I was like “oh, yeah,” when I heard the prayer, but I still didn’t get it. There was one critical part that I missed, that I’ll get to shortly. To start with, however, my initial understanding was a big help.

God, grant me the serenity

I had no real idea what serenity was, but I knew it was something better than I had. I came to understand that it wasn’t being happy or sad, but simply OK with things as they are. That took a while.

To accept the things I cannot change

Damn near everything, I discovered. In fact, the next line

Courage to change the things I can

was a big jolt, when I discovered that most of that was me!

And wisdom to know the difference.

That was the hard part: knowing the difference. It took me several years to accept the that the only thing I have power to change is me. I can put a gun to someone’s head and influence them to cooperate, but I’m not really changing them — or certainly not in any constructive way. PTSD, maybe.

Once I got “the difference” through my head, I had yet to figure out the hidden lesson behind the prayer. I might never have gotten the idea, except for something someone said at a meeting. He changed the last line to

“And the wisdom to know that the rest is none of my business.”

And there it is. What you do is none of my business, as long as it has no direct impact on me or mine, unless you have given me permission to comment — and even then there’s little or nothing I can do to change things. It isn’t even any of my business if you don’t like me. My business is to do the next right thing, live the best life I can, practice the principles to the best of my understanding. Then, if you still don’t like me…it’s still none of my business.

So now, that’s how I recite the Serenity Prayer: “…wisdom to know the difference, and to know when it’s none of my business.”

Very useful, the Serenity Prayer. My friends and family think so, too.

Footnote: As I was preparing to post this, I opened an email announcing that one of my oldest friends died with virtually no warning from a fast-growing brain tumor. I’m having a bit of an acceptance problem right now…but I sure do know the difference.