Life doesn't check
in with us before it happens:
“Hey Joe, do you
mind if over the next 6-months new neighbors move in, open a meth lab and have
really scary dogs that act like they want to eat you when just try to get to
your own front door?”
Well, you could go and get yourself a much bigger meaner dog ……………………………….WRONG!
The key is how
do I take care of myself and not make things worse. In some cases don’t have control.
You can feel helpless and powerless. All the worry in the world won’t make a difference. It may be difficult sometimes to even know why these things are happening.
So, what does one do?
How does someone
cope in trying situations? There is an old prayer used in Alcoholics Anonymous
that was originally written by the American theologian,
Reinhold Niebuhr:
"God, 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."
Ultimately we
are all responsible for our own lives and managing them. Think about what you
can change that helps. Can you ask yourself what you could do? Can I accept
what I can’t change. What is my
tolerance level? Is it too low and easily irritated? Is it too high and perhaps
not letting me see the signals to make some changes? It takes courage to face
ourselves and be willing to recognize what we do or think that contributes to
the problem. If you can allow yourself to see how you may be getting in your
own way the reward can be freedom of choice and less stress. When
we are stuck blaming or not accepting what we cannot change, we are indeed stuck.
We become miserable and risk feeling and acting like a victim leading to anger,
feeling helpless, depression and anxiety. What all that adds up to is stress on
top of a stressful situation. It’s like a snowball rolling down a hill.
A very wise old
friend who has long since passed was helpful with imparting the concepts of
perspective, tolerance, and acceptance. He was a psychologist by profession and
his name was George. You see, George enlisted in the military at the beginning
of WWII. He was 17 years old and lied about his age to enlist. It was early in
the war after Pearl Harbor was attacked.
Somewhere in the Pacific he was captured and
spent a few years in a Japanese POW camp. Any stories he shared about his
captivity always had life lessons intertwined within the context. One story was
about how conditions in the camp were not good for prisoners or the guards. Men
were sick from malaria or dysentery and would agonize over their plight. Well,
one day a Japanese guard took a group of them aside for a “chat”. He told them
that the war would not last forever and one day they will all go back home. He
told them to try and calm down by keeping this in mind. Amazing enough that “the
enemy” would impart such compassion and wisdom, but his advice was a template that
would define who survived and who didn’t. My friend described the survivors and
the unfortunate men who did not survive. Of course, some would be taken by
injuries sustained, disease and lack of proper medical treatment. The rest, as
George described, were separated by their own perspective of their situation
and inner ability to cope. Simply put, George described the men who would eventually
die as not being able to stop agonizing over being in such a situation. He
would say that the key was staying in the present and getting through one day
at a time. Focusing on what to do to get through a
particular day rather than on what they didn’t have or missed was paramount to
survival.
Perhaps the
message from the Japanese prison guard is
“this too shall pass”.
I can’t image
what this kind of experience would be like to survive or how I would deal with
it. I do know that his story has stuck with me and I find it helpful in times of
stress. In less dramatic situations we are at risk of agonizing about what is
or isn’t in our lives. By all means work with what can be changed, but also
remember to not torture ourselves (and sometimes others) when we cannot change
it.
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