Reinhold Niebuhr, an American theologian, wrote a short prayer in the nineteen thirties for a service in a village church in New England: grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. It was not meant for publication. A visitor asked whether he could take it; Niebuhr gave it away, remarking that it had probably been around for centuries. Through army pamphlets and Alcoholics Anonymous it became one of the most quoted sentences in English, printed on millions of cards, usually without his name. Its core was already in Epictetus.
You make something small for a small occasion. Someone asks whether he may take it with him, and you have no idea where it will go.
Where the prayer would end up, who would use it and whether his name would stay attached: not his, and he attached no importance to it either. The writing and the giving away were his. The pleasing part is that the content matches the attitude exactly: someone who understood the third line was not going to fight over ownership of the first two.
What have you made or said whose whereabouts you no longer know? And would you give it away if nobody would mention it was yours?
Yours, Not Yours · A Stoic practice ground · All cases