“What is the greatest hindrance to my achieving serenity? Determination—the grim resolve that I can do something about everything. This whole feeling of tightening up, girding oneself for battle, can defeat my purpose. Over and over, in a hundred different ways, I learn in Al-Anon that I must let go.” (ODAT, 11 May)
When I’m upset, my first instinct can be to change the circumstance apparently causing the upset.
Sometimes I can. Some people are negotiable with. Some people I need not have in my life. But some people are neither negotiable nor dispensable, and I have to put up with how they are. The job then is not to try to change them but to simply accept the messiness, the intrusion, the whatever.
When I stop demanding things be other than they are, I’m OK.