Circumstances and Control

              We all do it, some more than others. We have plans, hopes, dreams, ideas, and goals that guide us from where we are now to where we want to be at some point in the future. Funny thing is, we don’t realize just how little control we have over actually accomplishing these things until something comes along and throws us off course. In fact, we have so little control over our own lives and circumstances it’s amazing we can function without becoming overwhelmed to the point of mental shutdown. I guess it’s just something we never really focus on, kind of like an elephant in the room that we just go around in order to do what it is we want to do.

               A bold and complex concept such as this one of course comes with its complications. I’m not saying you have no say in your life or that you shouldn’t have those plans, goals, etc. that I mentioned above. In fact, that would normally be a horrible way of thinking because it can lead to laziness, self-defeat, and an overall apathetic outlook on life. The saying goes that if you want something go out and get it, or at least something along those lines. It can require a mix of determination, will, and strength of mind and body to even get up in the morning, but we need these things in order to face whatever comes at us that day. But, therein lies my point of this post. Daily we face whatever comes at us.

Let’s say that one night there was a thunderstorm that made your electric flicker long enough for your clocks to be reset. You woke up that morning later than usual because your alarm never went off due to the clock reset. This caused you to leave twenty minutes later than normal which lead to you being caught in a major traffic jam that you wouldn’t have run into if you had left when you normally do. You eventually make it in to work but you missed a big meeting in which you were supposed to give a presentation. You explain to your boss what happened and he seems to understand, but underneath he’s irritated and thinks you’re just giving him an excuse for having hit the snooze bar too many times. When the opportunity comes for you to be promoted a week later, your boss considers you but remembers that day you were late and missed the meeting due to a “traffic jam”. So, he decides to give the promotion to someone who is more “responsible”, someone he feels is more suited for the position. Initially you’re disappointed, but this decision has huge ripple effects. Because you weren’t promoted, your career doesn’t advance as fast as you wanted it to. On top of that, you weren’t in the position to meet someone who would have been a great mentor and friend, someone who would have changed your outlook on life and maybe even those plans and dreams you have. The amount of hypothetical ripple effects could go on and on, but hopefully you’re starting to see my point. Was it within your control for that original thunderstorm to have happened while you were sleeping which lead to everything else? Maybe you were too reliant on that alarm clock and you could have had more “control” if you had gotten enough sleep to wake up naturally without it. The list of things that were in your control or weren’t could go on and on.

If you think about it, the amount of your life that’s actually within your control is rather small. If you put it into some kind of pie chart, I bet your slice would be about the size of a normal slice of pie while outside events and circumstances gets to chow down on the rest. You had no control over when you were born. You had no control over the country you were born into. You had no control over the race or gender that you are. Beyond all of this, you had no control over what the implications of all of these things mean. Maybe you wish you were born back in colonial times, seeing the country you live in today being formed around you. Maybe you’ve endured a large amount of suffering or trauma in your life simply because of the color of your skin or because you’re a chick instead of a dude. Whatever the case may be, it’s not really something we should dwell on in terms of trying to change what has already happened. The challenge is to try and overcome the circumstances you’re in and work with the control you’ve got to try and make things the way you want them to be, despite the fact that someone thought you were on a diet when they were cutting the control pie chart.

Now I’m going to take things to the next level a little bit. It’s often said that God is all powerful and “in control”. For Christians, there’s also the notion of surrendering control of your life to Christ. Now the question is, how does this really work? Is it down to an action by action level, meaning if I decided to wave hello to you, was that God in control making me do that? Or is it more of an overarching thing where different things in our lives work together for His plans in a way we can’t understand? The trick with that one though is that all of our individual actions add up to the bigger picture of our lives, as I talked about earlier. With all of this, I come to the same conclusion. There are countless things both inside and outside of our control and we can’t draw any kind of line as to where God’s “control” stops and ours begins, if that’s even how that works. That being the case, I try not to focus on it too much because it’s the kind of thing where you can loop around and around into perpetuity, never hitting any kind of central answer. If you want my thoughts on a similar topic, read my last post. Supposedly God has us in the circumstances that we’re in for a reason and we have to act out of that. Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t complain or praise God for whatever situation you’re in or for the control you feel you have versus what you think you should have. But, good luck ever coming to any hard conclusions and join the rest of us questioning the same thing.

Overall, I guess my point is that we have to keep perspective on this whole matter. If we think we’re fully in control of our lives, we get knocked down pretty quickly when we walk outside and realize we don’t live in individual vacuums. If we think we have no control, motivation and progress are lost rapidly. Our circumstances and the control we have are usually the result of millennia of years of events from before we even existed. So, when you set a goal or start thinking about where you want to be in five years, remember how little control you have, work with the circumstances you’re in, and keep in mind that there are billions of others doing the same thing constantly around the world and their plans may not mesh with yours. Your life will never go according to plan but I guess that’s why it’s called a messy adventure.

Just a thought…