Day One Hundred-Nine: Who Is In Control?

Are we really in control?

I was taking my son to a friend's house yesterday, about 5 miles from our house. It could have been 100 miles away fro the difference in the landscape. We drove along a winding road filled with dense pockets of pine trees crowding either side. The storm of last month was there all around us. Trunks snapped in two, downed limbs and uprooted trees littered the sides of the road and the floor of the forest as we drove past. It was a stark reminder that if we believe we are the one's in control, we are fooling ourselves.

I spend much of my life trying in vain to control everything around me. I admit that I am a control freak, and it is not something I am very proud of, well, not all of the time. I want to know what I'm doing, where I'm going and how long its going to take. This applies to the family's morning routine as well my long term life plan and everything in between. I have been known to do crazy stuff like rearranging a sock drawer just for the satisfaction of streamlining the contents; i.e. control. What an exhausting illusion.

We only need to look at the recent catastrophic events in Haiti and Chile to know that we as humans have only built for ourselves the illusion of control. We can plan until the cows come home, but if mother nature has a different plan, we are powerless to change it. The only thing we can control is our response. We can be prepared, be informed and be careful in our planning and that is just about the extent of our control. When the storm hits, we react, hopefully survive and move on.

This is absolutely the road map on how to live life. I can plan how my day will go, but I have to be ready to bob and weave with whatever roadblock is thrown in my way. I can envision what type of person each of my sons will grow up to become, but it is ultimately up to them to chose their own path. I can plan to become old and senile with loads of grandchildren and great grand children, but only the universe knows how long I will be on this earth. I can prepare my day, teach my children, careful with my health, but I can't control any of it. None of us can. This is not fatalistic, this is just being real.

This is where faith comes in. Whether you believe in God, a higher power, the wisdom of the Gods or the Wisdom of the Universe, ultimately that faith is what is going to sustain you through each day, year and every year after that. Someone or something gave us the sense to prepare, so someone or something out there is rooting for us. We may not be in control, blackberries, email accounts, travel itineraries, stock portfolios and insurance plans be damned, but we do have the resources to make the best of the ride. The best and most plentiful of these resources is each other. We should spend a great deal more time enjoying each other, our friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, classmates and fellow human beings and less time preparing every detail of our lives in the attempt to gain some sort of control.

Note to self: Live more in the moment, because that is all there really is. Back away from the sock drawer. Repeat.