Sorting the possible from the inevitable

A famous prayer, by the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, asks for « the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be, and the wisdom to tell the difference ». Independently of its original religious setting, what we keep here is its structure of discernment, the practical wisdom of the ancients made method: faced with an ordeal, not to settle too quickly between accepting everything and wanting to change everything, but to look for the boundary, case by case. Today this rule helps when a difficulty seems to swamp everything and you no longer know where to act or where to let go.