31/05 - Mistakes and the Unknown

I heard a good quote recently: "Dear Lord, 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."
I'm pretty sure it's famous, but I'd never heard it before and thought it would be very apt for a new post, so here it is!
But, if I were to be totally honest, everything I could put on this post is in that quote. The real questions are - how CAN we know the difference, how do you know changing something is the right thing to do and is changing something making a difference? What makes us happy might not make the people around happy, and if someone is unhappy with you it can be very hard to be happy at all. So where is that magical power that can tell us what the "right" thing to do is?
A friend once said "Don't regret, because at the time it made total sense." and I'm always a great believer in "Learn from your mistakes, and the mistakes that have been made before you." I can be quite amazing what you can learn from other people, and there is a famous quote from some great person that went something like "We look for ourselves in people." and although it just sounds quite self-righteous, it's true. We always look for things in situations or in people that we can relate to, things that we know, knowing that that part of them/it is most predictable. Always scared of the unknown, and probably for good reason. It goes again logic to reach out to the unknown, for the simple fact that is IS unknown, but isn't everything at one point or another unknown? Isn't that how we get to grips with that we DO know? Isn't that how we learn? Mistakes ARE always going to be made, no doubt about it, but the key thing about mistakes is not to let them be made in vain. And always keen an eye out for that unknown, because sometimes it's the unknown that has the answers, and it's the unknown that can give you the difference between what you can change, and what you have to accept.