… and there’s not much we can do about it.
I used to think that if I act right, plan well, and stay focused, the world will cooperate. That cause and effect is a clean, predictable line. If I leave early, I arrive on time. If I cook carefully, the meal turns out great.
But sometimes, stuff just happens—and there is almost nothing we can do about it.
There is so much entirely beyond our control that to expect everything to go exactly as I planned it feels like asking for too much. As much as I’d like to believe everything that happens is just a direct result of causes I set off, sometimes things just happen. And no matter how hard I try to pin down how I caused it, I can’t.
There is just so much more at play than my own actions.
Now, some of it is still on me—my thoughts, my fears, my energy. But a much larger part is just stuff I can do nothing about.
So I try not to beat myself up too much anymore. If I know for sure that I’ve given my best, I leave it at that.
Sure, it would be great if I could be in control of both the process and the outcome. But unfortunately, I only get to participate in the process—and even then, only the part of the process that’s actually under my influence.
Sometimes there’s traffic even when I leave the house early, and I’m late for the meeting anyway. Sometimes I pour coffee on my boss—not on purpose (even if I might have fantasized about it once when he yelled at me over nothing). And other times, I put way too much salt in the food I was looking forward to cooking all day.
And while I’d love to sit here and pretend all these things happen for “some greater good”—that the universe is just falling into place. But honestly, some of it makes no sense at all.
And there’s really not much I can do about that. So I let it be.
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