If
this is neither my own badness, nor an effect of my own badness, and the common
good is not injured, why am I troubled about it? And what is the harm to the
common good?
—Marcus
Aurelius, Meditations, Book 5 (tr
Long)
The responsibility for ruling my own
character is already quite sufficient for a life that is well lived, and
therefore happy. Why must I multiply my worries any further by seeking to be
the master of things beyond my power to determine? Why must I confuse
conscience with preference?
If I am to take an inventory of all
of my frustrations, I discover that most of them follow from trying to take
control of things that neither are, nor should be, under my control. I stray
from the good life whenever I fret over anything that is beyond my own moral
choice to act according to the good of Nature, or whenever I insist that
anything I have an inclination for is actually a moral necessity.
My habits of being a busybody, of
seeking to arrange all the pieces of my world as I see fit, is the source of so
much of my anxiety. If it isn’t about what is right or wrong in my own thoughts
and actions, and if it isn’t about how my thoughts and actions conform to the
goods of others, then it isn’t any of my business.
This isn’t about not caring. A
caring man does not need to be a pushy, bossy, or opinionated man. I should pursue
what I know to be right, though never be obsessed with changing things I cannot
change. Many years of working with addicts always brings me back to the “Serenity
Prayer”:
God
grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage
to change the things I can,
and
the Wisdom to know the difference
A more comical, though equally
helpful, way to keep myself from overreaching my bounds, and thereby avoid becoming
a quivering mass of tension, is simply to listen to Monty Python’s “I’m So
Worried”:
I'm
so worried about what's happenin' today, you know.
And
I'm worried about the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow.
I'm
so worried about my hair falling out and the state of the world today.
And
I'm so worried about bein' so full of doubt about everything, anyway.
I can then laugh at myself, remember
to do what good I can, and let the rest be as it will be. Being troubled by
everything only makes me the source of my own grief.
Written in 8/2006
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