[Alternative: If you prefer a more intellectual version of the following that’s twice as long – incorporating topics like philosophy and The Enlightenment, ranging from gnosticism, philosophers Nietzsche and Aquinas, psychoanalysts Carl Jung and Jordan Peterson, the Nazis, The Buddha, in theologian Richard Rohr – see here instead.]
The power *of* change. Not the power *to* change, like this adaptation pines for:
“God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change,
the courage to change the one I can,
and the wisdom to know it’s me.”
“I’m working on myself,” is a phrase that never sat comfortably with me. After all, I was not the agent behind so many forces that shaped who I am.
I’ve lived through a span of sobriety, and I have failed at smoking cessation countless times. Sometimes I controlled my diet and carried through on exercise, but I’ve never been in full control and sustained it. I may have felt like I was changing myself at the time, but of course I can see plainly that it didn’t stick.
Each of us is a control freak. It seems that, in general, when we are younger we believe we control much more about our fate. That seems to diminish as we wisen with age.
When I sit down to work, I am creating something with an end in mind, but it rarely turns out just as I plan. The job work we do is to produce something in the future. I don’t think that’s entirely what it means in the phrase “working on one’s self.” Or, I don’t know, maybe that *is* what it means – that you aspire to produce a new you.
What therapists try to do is shift our framing of the past – and probably the present and the future too – so that the emotions attached to those things can shift as well. You see, that can’t be done at will, by conscious thought.
I’m not saying it’s rare to succeed at changing ourselves, but the world is a much larger force. It changes us. And I think the real change of which we are the agent – and which demands considerable work – is a change in how we perceive the changes in us which occur unconsciously as our world unfolds. I would say we change as we become agents who can contemplate the changes consciously. Quite different than working on changes in diet, exercise, hobbies, and other *habits* of behavior – or behaviors within relationships, whether old or new.
Authentic contemplation can lead to integration, so that the attributes we desire in ourselves can be recognized time after time. “Integration” means they stick, so that one day, anticipating something upcoming, we consider it in that shifted frame. “How do I put love first in this coming event?” How do I prepare my psyche and my body to receive the coming unknown with openness – not anxiety or resentment?
Seems when I am a conscious force in my own mind and body, I just might be more of a force in the world. Of course this nonsense doesn’t always work. It’s messy. And messy means we aren’t in complete control. But then again, I really never have been; why should I ever expect to be?
As you reframe your past, I would encourage you not to exclude the dark parts. Remember when you started to draw? Everything was stick lines, and then an art teacher, perhaps, taught you how to do shadowing? It gave depth to your drawings. The darkness and shadows of your past are what give contrast and depth to the canvas of your life. I prefer forces with depth over the shallow.
I’m quite certain that I alone am not enough to change the enormous mess that I am. Thank goodness I live in a world full of other forces of change.
“God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change,
the courage to change the one I can,
and the wisdom to know it’s me.”
Perhaps God grants answers not by changing our traits or status or constitution or behavior, but by changing our mind – by way of our heart – about who we are.
Perhaps this world which changes us is a good place, oozing with love, and dripping with grace. Perhaps.
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Neil D. 2023-10-17
Feel with Neil 