I discovered that control is nothing and everything at the same time. This sounds contradictory, even oxymoronic, but in my defence, let me borrow the wise sayings of a Nobel laureate: "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
So, here's my offering of two profound truths, held together in a taut tension of mutual symbiosis. We are powerless to control how life will turn out. Things will happen the way they want to happen. Control, in this sense, is nothing. It is a delusion, a vain effort, that can even be counterproductive.
Try controlling how a dice will turn out. You are better off in the long run to rely on random chances. To add to the chaos, try adding another dice to the mix, and maybe another and another. Now, it gets even more unpredictable. Life is like that. Our actions, like a dice, do not stand alone. Our actions interact with another action, and more others. As actions collide, it adds randomness to more randomness. It becomes a hopeless concatenation of chaos.
Life's not a scripted drama. Happiness and misery are not paid thespians who make their appearances at directed and timed intervals. They come and go as and when they please. Life's more like a cascading avalanche and each snowflake represents an individual, his thoughts and actions. How can a snowflake dictates the path of the monstrosity that is the avalanche? How can a snowflake ever feel responsible for its action?
We are an atom in the huge morass of matter. Our efforts are seemingly particle-like in the vastness of quantum space. How can a grain of sand tells the beach to park somewhere else? We can't and our dilemma is our refusal to admit it. This denial is also the source of our frustration. We refuse to give up control in this aspect. This obsession is an abscess in our soul - swelling into bitterness and inflamed into discontentment. But the message does not end here.
And here's the paradox of human becoming; the second profound truth. Earlier I said that control is everything also. This is the upbeat part of the message. Control is everything; but this control is the control of another sphere. It is the control of choices. This is of course no big secret. But the full understanding of it is. Once the principle is grasped, the power, like that which can be harnessed in an atom, is boundless.
The world of choices is without boundaries and this is where we can make a powerful difference. And our control in this world is crucial. It is in fact everything. While a grain and a snowflake cannot make a difference in the world of it's external realities, the rules are different in the world of choices. In this world, our response determines our destiny. It is no revelation that we can choose our responses in the face of uncontrollable tragedy.
Our choices determine our actions and our actions determine the ultimate outcome. This is therefore the paradox of control: We can't control our circumstances but we can, through indirect means, control how the circumstances will turn out via our choices. This is the backbone message of all human flourishing.
The problem is that we reverse the order. We try to control the world we cannot control and dismiss the world (of choices) that we can control. Our myopia is to mistake that which we cannot change for that which we can change. And because we refuse to see otherwise, we bemoan our frustrating attempts to change the unchangeable. This is also the source of our quiet desperation.
A Nobel laureate once said, "I believe that I am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but that I am responsible for what I do with the life I've got." This is, in a nutshell, the mustard seed of choices. In a tragedy, we can bemoan the hopelessness of the situation which we have no control over or celebrate the hopefulness of our choices, which we have.
Please don't overlook the subtlety of the differences - at times, it's a matter of life and death, success and failure. In the end, when we cannot change our situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. Question: Are we up to the challenge?
PS: I've got a letter about evil which may tickle your fancy, entitled "Cavalierly Evil".
No comments:
Post a Comment