I was seven years old when my grandmother pulled me aside, right after my father walked out on us for good. I remember sitting on her worn velvet couch, my legs too short to reach the floor, watching her weathered hands fold together as she whispered something that would end up saving my life more times than I can count.

“Keanu,” she said softly, “there’s something I need to teach you. Something my grandmother taught me when I was your age, after I lost everything.”

I didn’t know it then, but I was about to receive the most powerful tool I’d ever possess. I thought she was just trying to comfort me about my dad leaving, but what she gave me in those five minutes wasn’t just words. It was a way of seeing the world — a way of surviving it.

The prayer itself, I’ll share with you. But first, you have to understand why it works. Without the stories, without understanding surrender — not the kind that makes you weak, but the kind that teaches you strength — those words would just sound like words.

Hollywood and a Velvet Couch Memory

At 22, I was living in a shoebox apartment in Hollywood, waiting tables, sleeping on couches, chasing what seemed like an impossible dream. The night before my audition for Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, I sat in my car outside a 7-Eleven with only $40 left. Groceries or gas — that was the choice.

That’s when I remembered my grandmother’s prayer. I closed my eyes, hands on the steering wheel, and whispered it. But instead of asking for the role, I said something new:

“Let me be exactly who I’m supposed to be in that room tomorrow.”

And that was the first time I walked into an audition not trying to play a role, but simply being myself. They gave me the part. But the real gift wasn’t the role — it was the lesson: The prayer wasn’t about bending the world to my will. It was about aligning with my truth.

Love, Loss, and Surrender

Years later, I faced my darkest valley. Jennifer, the love of my life, and I lost our daughter, Ava. Eighteen months later, Jennifer herself was gone in a car accident. I remember standing in the nursery we had prepared, the silence deafening, and for the first time in my life, I couldn’t remember the words to my grandmother’s prayer.

But in that silence, I heard something deeper — not words, but a knowing: grief isn’t something you “get through.” It’s something you carry. And the prayer was never meant to erase pain. It was meant to help me carry it with grace.

A Stranger, a Fence, and a Piece of Paper

One night, years later, I found myself lost — spiritually and literally. My car broke down in the canyons. I stumbled upon an old man sitting on a porch, reading by lamplight. Somehow, I told him everything: my emptiness, my doubts, my fear that none of it mattered.

He listened. Then he said:
“Son, you’re not having a crisis of purpose. You’re having a crisis of connection.”

We spent three hours fixing his broken fence by flashlight. Before I left, he handed me a piece of paper. On it, in shaky handwriting, were words that echoed my grandmother’s prayer, but with a twist:

“Let me be useful. Let me be kind. Let me be present. Let me be enough.”

I still keep that paper in my wallet.

A Boy Named Marcus

Not long ago, I visited a children’s hospital. There I met Marcus, a 10-year-old boy fighting leukemia. Bright eyes, thin from chemo, full of life. We talked about movies, about his dream of being a filmmaker. Then he asked me something that pierced straight through me:

“Mr. Reeves, are you lonely?”

I wanted to say no. But the truth slipped out: “Sometimes I am.”

He nodded. “Me too. But I figured out lonely isn’t the same as being alone. Lonely is when you forget that you matter to people. Alone is just geography.”

That boy taught me more in one sentence than I had learned in decades. Before I left, he asked me to pray with him. Not my grandmother’s prayer. His own:

“Thank you for letting me be here today. Thank you for letting me matter. Thank you for letting me love and be loved. Help me remember that even when things are hard, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.”

Six months later, Marcus was gone. But his words stay with me every day.