why worry --

There are a lot of things for which I take concern now, in my 58th year, that were not on my list of worries in my childhood -- or twenties -- or thirties -- or forties.

Some of it is due, no doubt, to a greater breadth of vision, stemming from greater experience.

But there were many 'issues' that passed through my awareness that I dismissed for the simple, even permissible, reason that I didn't see how I could do anything about them. Starving children in foreign countries. The lack of beauty and elegance in our transportation and distribution systems. Suchlike.

There was a prayer then that often appeared in those rather banal plaques and prayer books that are so common in gift stores. It still shows up now, but it's been shorn of a significant passage:

Lord, Please grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the strength to change the things I CANNOT ACCEPT, and the wisdom to know the difference.

These days the second part of the supplication has been edited to say, simply, to change the things I can. Rather too inclusive, I think, and significantly altering the meaning. In that word-and-a-half omission, we have completely rejected -- or at least overlooked -- the possibility that there are things which are, in their nature, and without exception, unacceptable.

I believe I was -- am -- often guilty of consigning problems to the category of 'not my fault, not my responsibility' that really belong to the matters indicated in those two words omitted from the serenity prayer.

Knowing how to sort these issues out, and what to do about them, is a life's work. Mine. Everyone's.

And note: I don't mean What legislation/expenditure/new gadget/old tradition can I inflict/reject/enact in order to make the world more closely resemble my idea of right?, but what can I. DO. NOW. to enact the responsibilities I cannot escape?

Every tiny bit counts.