The Part of the Serenity Prayer I Skipped

Issue #46

Hello! I’m Aaron Kardell. In my newsletter, I pick one random topic to go deep on.

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I’ve cycled through three postures over the last decade: enraged, numb, and now – I hope – engaged.

A common lament I’ve had over the last ten years has been something to the effect of “This isn’t normal. We’re all seeing this, right?!?”

In 2015-2017, I would take to social media with righteous anger, frustrated by the affairs of the world, somehow hoping I could break through the noise and make a difference.

Late last year, I made a conscious effort to adopt a different posture. From afar, it may have looked a lot like indifference. Instead, I saw it as simply embracing the belief that there’s not a whole lot I can change on a macro level, so maybe I should try not to live in a constant state of rage and anger about it.

That stance worked for me for much of 2025. I thought I was embracing the gist of the Serenity Prayer: “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.”

Numbness helped me survive the noise, but it was never meant to be the final posture. More recently, it feels like that dam of numbness in me is breaking.

All year long, I’ve seen a constant barrage of “reasonable norms” get discarded.

And rather than concede that this is our new normal, I’ve been thinking through what it means to do something.

To truly embrace the Serenity Prayer requires not ignoring the middle section: “the courage to change the things I can”.

So what does “change the things I can” mean?

Engagement is choosing presence over outrage and action over commentary.

I don’t have the money, the platform, or the charisma to change anything on a national scale. But not being able to change everything does not absolve me from changing something. I simply need to direct my energy toward more productive pursuits. I can start by doing one small, proximate thing – acknowledging that I have agency.

As a recent example, when I learned that my Somali neighbors here in Minneapolis are being targeted by ICE, a potentially abstract debate about immigration suddenly became personal.

It made me want to find the smallest ways to start to lean in.

The Twin Cities are home to two of the biggest refugee settlement populations in the U.S. - both Somali and Hmong. Knowing that history, I suspected and was able to confirm that the overwhelming majority of Somalis in Minneapolis are here legally, and most have already obtained citizenship.

Nevertheless, based on what I’ve learned locally, ICE has detained multiple American citizens on our streets without probable cause while ignoring identification when offered.

Understandably, this has led to several Somali Americans being scared to leave their homes simply because of the color of their skin.

We were invited by some of our neighbors this week to band together to help buy groceries for several families who are afraid to leave their houses, and we quickly said yes.

Other Minnesotans have found more direct ways to protest ICE’s presence. They’re making their presence known at hotels ICE is staying at. They’re standing watch in their neighborhoods.

We’re having deep conversations with our kids at the dinner table about what’s right, what’s wrong, and ways we can make a difference.

Rather than sit here and complain to myself or a random person on the Internet that “it’s completely unacceptable to call any human being ‘garbage’ and how are we accepting this as normal?” I’m instead going to find the smallest things I have agency over and try to actually do something.

I certainly don’t have any of this figured out yet. I’m simply writing this to acknowledge that I want to migrate from “default numb” in 2025 to “default engaged” in 2026.

This is only a small sampling of what I hope engagement looks like for me in this next season. But I’m convinced it looks different for everyone. How are you rising above the chaos and finding ways to engage? Please reply to this email. I’m looking for inspiration!

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