Dear Midlifer:

Almost at the end of your post you wrote: “the past that will never change”- we do try so hard to change the past, an impossibility. And this is where the key to a peace of mind is, in accepting the past. It says in the serenity prayer: “grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change..”

But it is not only the last sixteen years that you need to accept but the very fact that life is not just, that justice is not the rule, but rather the exception.

Accepting this reality does not mean that you believe that life should be unjust. It means accepting that life is not like it should be.

There is a lot of dysfunction in human behavior, lots of unnecessary suffering, lots of waste and loss that didn’t have to be, but it is anyway. Dysfunction, like justice, is the exception, not the rule.

And so, all that any one of us has is the rest of our lives. How can we make what is left more functional, less distressing?

“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.”

anita