Good morning everyone,
Here's my quotation for today. It's quite a well known one, and I expect a lot of you know it already, but it's quite relevant to our current situation, so I felt it was well worth using.
We’ve had a little time now to try to come to terms with the new way of life we find ourselves living as we go through this world emergency. It’s been bewildering, frightening and challenging, and we’re understandably reacting to our new circumstances in different ways. There isn’t one clear way to cope, And sometimes, as right now, we have to come to an understanding that there’s not much we can do to change our situation.
Viktor E Frankel was an Austrian psychologist and neurologist, but also a holocaust survivor. And he went through some very terrible experiences himself.
Frankl was on the right lines when he said that ‘people are driven to find a meaning to life, and that it’s this that enables them to eventually overcome painful experiences. He said, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves”.
That’s certainly true now. It’s not a particularly comfortable thought, but it seems quite right.
It’s a far from easy task. We just want things to ’go back to normal’ and are frustrated that they can’t, for what could be some time.. So we have to find a way to surrender to the change instead of fighting it, in order to become more accepting and less frustrated.
With that in mind, I’ve slightly adapted the Alcoholics Anonymous Serenity prayer as my quotation for today.
"May I learn the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
Being together in this kind of community can be a powerful tool to help us to cope with the changes that have been thrust upon us, by learning to lean on each other more.
And we’re getting stronger, day by day.
Together we can demonstrate that acceptance is possible if enough people stand united and choose not to fall.
I hope you all manage to have a happy day.
Quotation for Sunday 26th April 2020
