How does one learn to live without control?

In my experience, I have very little control over much of what goes on around me. I cannot control large things like the weather or small things like the plumbing getting clogged due to something my neighbor put in the sink in her side of the duplex.

A fundamentalist Christian family member blames this year’s heat wave and drought on the sins of the nation. “God is in control,” she says often. I really believe she’s assuaging her own psyche for the lack of control she feels in her own life.

I know people who get angry at traffic. Crowded streets seem to exist to inflict pain on them personally.

Then I have friends who seem perfectly at ease with almost all situations they encounter. They often talk using first person pronouns instead of second or third person pronouns like you and they. These people don’t get angry at politicians. They say their piece and move on, and they word it using phrases such as “I believe” or “it seems to me.” It’s my opinion the way they talk demonstrates a level of detachment.

They don’t appear threatened by enormous events or small situations. They go with the flow.

A very close friend once taught me his philosophy of “skin-side/inside.” He would say that whatever happened inside him, he could control, but whatever happened on the skin-side or outside him, he could not control. If he couldn’t control it and it didn’t prove an imminent threat to his life, then why worry about it? Now, he was really getting down to his thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and actions. He wasn’t claiming to control whether or not he developed cancer from second-hand smoke.

He was happy without control.

How much control do you have in your life?

Do you feel comfortable or uncomfortable when you recognize situations or events you can’t manage?