Control your Reality

From the Stoa this wet Wednesday, I will discuss our perceptions of fate and destiny. No, we will not get lofty, but will seek to keep it grounded in our day to day reality.

When I was younger, everyone always said to step forward take your punishment if you did wrong. Take responsibility for your mistakes. Of course most everyone I knew...scratch that, EVERYONE I knew attempted to avoid their punishment.

They would expend vast amounts of energy and accumulate stress just to avoid a punishment. More energy and more stress then they would endure if they just took their medicine.

With age comes, I hope, wisdom. Wisdom enough to understand the truths behind these easy to remember "wives tales" of duty and obligation to the truth.

When one gets older they begin to see the complex connections in every day life. Complexity upon complexity...driven from the basic components of simple human interactions. We have the power to "fix" our own futures. I do not mean "fix" as in "repair". No ,I mean "fix" as in "to set". I also sometimes believe that this is why the older one gets, the more time they spend in church. I believe that they are seeing so many connections within the webs of complexity that they go there not out of fear of mortality, but awe.

An example: A factory worker is hearing about from the news that their plant may close due to the bad economy. The family worries if it will be able to pay its bills. The rest of the workers worry about it as well. Their union tells them that all will be well and that they will fight to keep the plant open.

This person has several choices. He can HOPE that the faith he places in the unions will be enough to keep the plant open, he can work actively with the union to keep the plant, or he can take the time he has left to retrain for another vocation. Fix your own future. Don't be carried along by it.

Unions have a poor record of keeping anything open. Working with the union to keep a plant open expends vast amounts of energy and time that, in the end, bear no fruit. By taking the harder choice of the three, he teaches himself a new skill, a skill needed by someone who is willing to pay them money for their services.

Hope and change. Futility. He can HOPE the plant will stay open, but if it does not, he is on the bottom of a bad situation. If he works to keep the plant, then he will feel both rage and disappointment that it all came to nothing. This can have a negative effect on family, friends, and his soul.

By taking control of the situation, he jumps from a vehicle who's course, though not certain, will certainly take it into either a wall or a ditch. Better to chart your own path.

He has spared himself the uncertainty and worry that can cripple a person. This uncertainty and anxiety express themselves in alcoholism, divorce, child abuse, and suicide. Taking control has its own risks, but at least you can go down knowing you did your best, and victory will taste that much sweeter.

Another example:
A person is working in a job that causes stress and anxiety out of proportion to what one would expect. Stoicism teaches that stress is caused my a mis-match in nature. If you live according to your nature, your character, then you will not experience stress that you can not control.

So, do you take extra schooling, employ tutors, work 16 hour days to make your company happy with your output, or do you take a breath and think about where the stress is coming from?

Rather than expend a mountain of energy maintaining an untenable situation, take that energy and pivot your life. Move it into a direction that is more in line with your nature. Your character. Many in the business world call this "fit".

Very little in life can carry a guarantee or promise of success. Heck, that is part of the joy of life. To strive against something to accomplish. No one likes "God" mode on a game all the time. Pivot your life, learn from your actions, and work to match your life as close to your personal nature as possible.

The theory is simple, the application is difficult. We all have our excuses, therefore we must carry our own stresses, ultimately. Regret over life's choices must be your burden and your burden alone.

Think hard on that last sentence.

This was not a blog on futility, but one of hope and real change. Think on that, too.

Live well.

--Zavost