The illusion of control

[pjthompson]

Random quote of the day:

“You are in control of your life. Don’t ever forget that. You are what you are because of the conscious and subconscious choices you have made.”

—Barbara Hall, A Summons to New Orleans

I don’t usually inject my own opinion into the quotes, preferring to let people make up their own minds about things. But this quote strikes me as particularly ironic in regards to my own life. You see, the lesson I have been learning, constantly reinforced over recent months and years, is that control is an illusion that we humans comfort ourselves with. I do believe we have free will, but often that amounts to how we react to the uncontrollable forces that swirl around us. You may, of course, have another opinion—such is the nature of opinions. And I have no control over that.

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Comments

[mount-oregano.livejournal.com]

Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset said, "Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia," "I am myself and my circumstance." That is, I am free inside my fate.

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

Yep, that about sums it.

[frigg.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, I always have issues with quotes like these.

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

I think they're more of a wish than anything gained through experience. Or maybe from people who have had blessed lives, I don't know.

[frigg.livejournal.com]

I'm leaning toward the blessed lives - or at least lives where the things holding them back or making them unhappy were within their control. Or... they mean it in a sense of making the best of what you have, which I guess is also control to some degree.

What I don't like about the quote is the implication that you and only you are responsible for the way your life is, because of the choices you've made.

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

Yes to all that. I can't imagine anyone who's been buffeted by life's real currents, the things that happen that are completely uncontrollable, would ever be able to make such a statement in good faith.

success or failure

[dalaruan.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read Julian Barnes' "Flaubert's Parrot"? in one chapter he wrote different CV's of Flaubert: One only lists success & serendipity, the other only lists the disasters & disappointments. Two completely different lives are the result, and yet it is the biography of the same man.

T.H. White once wrote "The more I think about it, the more I see that success or failure lies in the description of the event, not in the event itself."

I think so, too.

Re: success or failure

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

All too true in terms of success or failure, but those are very different things than control. The illusion of control. We have the ability to make up our minds, to make choices, to describe things as we like—but that still does not give us control over things like unexpected illnesses, train wrecks, people who fall out of love with us, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

"I am the master of my fate" only in the sense of what I do and make and decide with the uncontrolled things that life sends me.

Re: success or failure

[dalaruan.livejournal.com]

I got the point but I think the 'power of words' has a strong part in it. Look at Grimm's Fairy-Tale "Hans in Luck". I had a companion who believed that his fate was completely under his control - he had bad luck like others, but he'll never described it so: Every misfortune he took like a challange, and he always won. Or so he believed. He strongly despised people who 'let failure happen'. A go-getter who believed that his own will is the key to his - yes, indeed - very sucessful life. Illness, losses, etc. - he'll never took them as a stroke of fate but as a chance to make even a better choice than before. It was as fascinating as creepy.

Re: success or failure

[pjthompson.livejournal.com]

Fascinating, yes. But I'd posit that it was an exercise in super self-delusion.

I don't think hopelessness is the answer, either. Thinking oneself the helpless victim of fate is another kind of "comforting" illusion, as it allows people to think they have no responsibility for how their life turns out, and even allows some wiggling out of responsibility for their actions.

I thought it interesting that yesterday's quote came up when it did (completely at random). Choice is all we truly own—and taking responsibility for the choices we make, even if our choices aren't very good.

Maybe that's my comforting illusion. :-)