Story
David was preparing for his outdoor wedding. The couple had strung twinkling white Christmas lights around the bushes, stuffed untold bags of party favors, arranged caterers, and set up the dainty blue pavilion where they would say their vows.
They’d set the date for late May, but as the day approached, the weather forecasts took a turn for the nasty. Rain, maybe hail. What if their perfect day turned into a soggy mess? David fretted: did they need a larger pavilion? One that was waterproof? What would the guests say if they were drenched by the rain? What would they do with the hors d’oeuvres on long tables? Nightmarish visions of getting married under a large plastic tarp, the blooming heirloom roses decimated by hail, danced in his head.
On the morning of the wedding, as he stared out the window at the ominous sky, his grandmother noticed his distress. “David, you can’t control the weather,” she said gently. “But you can control how you enjoy today.”
Her words sank in. He realized that, no matter what happened, the day was about love and celebration, not just the setting. He let go of his worries and focused on the joy of marrying his best friend.
As the ceremony began, the first raindrops fell, but instead of panic, laughter filled the air. As it turned out, there was a tiny drizzle of rain – not enough to cause any trouble. They exchanged vows under the clouds, surrounded by loved ones, and danced in the rain. David was relieved that he hadn’t wasted a lot of time worrying.
Analysis
David is experiencing some social anxiety about the wedding: how will all of the guests feel if the wedding doesn’t go as planned? This creates a narrative about rejection, which (as we have discussed previously) triggers David’s feelings about that. For hunter gatherers, social rejection was in the Default Human Range of Stressors (DHRS): rare but very serious.
David can use a Narrative Arrow to renarrativize this rejection story, replacing it with a more positive one in which he surrenders control. I am not sure that hunter gatherers frequently surrendered control. For instance, according to Frazer in The Golden Bough, these societies might use magic to try to control the rainfall in spite of having no evidence that the magic would work. However, for modern humans, surrendering control can be a positive narrative, and positive narratives were certainly helpful for hunter gatherers.
It’s important to distinguish between what you can and can’t control. In other words – perhaps paradoxically – self-control and agency can come from taking pleasure in accepting non-control.
The famous serenity prayer says:
“God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.”
Here are a few Serenity Arrows:
- Sometimes, we can’t even control ourselves. This is an especially tricky one. It’s important to know oneself well enough to decide what one can and can’t do.
- Whatever else you might be able to do, you can’t control your past actions – or anything else in the past. It’s helpful to take responsibility for past actions, such as by apologizing for errors and perhaps figuring out how to prevent similar mistakes, but it’s not helpful to worry too much beyond that.
- You can’t please everyone.
- You can’t make everyone like you.
- Nothing will be valued by everyone. Not only that, but I’d suggest you can’t always categorize people (this is the person who likes this, that is the person who likes that). People may surprise you.
The Serenity Arrow is related to the circle of influence vs. circle of concern distinction. To accept the things that cannot be changed means matching our circle of concern to reflect our circle of influence.
Nexus State Theory 