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.
Reinhold Niebuhr

The future's not ours to see. Whatever will be will be.

We can control our own thoughts, our own interactions, and our own destiny, to a degree.

We cannot control anything that we don't interact with. Not at all.

In the modern world of global communications, we learn daily of people and places we have no control over. We are on the receiving end of originations which we have no opportunity to respond to.

No more than we can stop the rain, make the sun shine.

This is a thing we learn early. And often.

We learn to refrain from investing ourselves emotionally in events we cannot control, in things we learn of only after the fact.

We cannot see far into the future. And we cannot change the past at all.

In a world that deluges us daily with stories of the past, it becomes crucial to distinguish stories that help us to predict and guide our own future from those that tell us nothing of personal value.

This is crucial to our own future functioning, and to our present peace of mind.

Que sera sera.

Reinhold Niebuhr's poem (the whole poem):

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things
I cannot change,
Courage to change the
things I can, and the
wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardship as the
pathway to peace.
Taking, as He did, this
sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it.
Trusting that He will make
all things right if I
surrender to His Will;

That I may be reasonably happy
in this life, and supremely
happy with Him forever in
the next.
Amen

Reinhold Niebuhr (1926)