Do we ever really have any control over our lives?

R

Rose65

Well-known Member
Location
United Kingdom
Let's face it, the unexpected can happen in a moment. We do not know what the next second holds so how far can we plan?
We can insure ourselves to the hilt but still be crushed by fate anytime.
We make decisions at the time, circumstances can change so much. Life is such a lottery from cradle to grave, length of life absolutely unknowable.
This can be seen as a positive or negative.
 

Aunt Bea said:
I believe that we can prepare ourselves for many things and be better off because of it.

Even if we don’t always have control over what happens to us we can control how we react.

"The future belongs to those who prepare for it today." — Malcolm X.
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I agree, the one thing we can control is our own reaction. That is worth thinking upon.
 

Reminds me of the two following scriptures:

Ecclesiastes 9:11 ►
I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.

Proverbs 27:1 ►
Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.
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The idea there is No control and no reason to have any effort to try .......... is why we have so many people in bad situations... and a victim mentality everywhere.

Personal responsibility and common sense has kept me out of many problems .... is it fool proof ....NO ... but lowering the risk is what we do in everything....
 
Jeni said:
The idea there is No control and no reason to have any effort to try .......... is why we have so many people in bad situations... and a victim mentality everywhere.

Personal responsibility and common sense has kept me out of many problems .... is it fool proof ....NO ... but lowering the risk is what we do in everything....
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Indeed we certainly can lower risk but still fate can get us unaware anytime.
I don't mean be a victim, I mean to think about what we can and cannot control.
In the end our own behaviour, responses and decisions are all we have left.
 
I read the non-fiction "Flukes" by Brian Klaas recently. (Well, most of it. Kinda got repetitive and the gist is explained within the first several chapters.) The essence: our life paths are far more dependent on flukes, luck, happenstance, etc., than planning and complete self-determination. Consider the tremendous accident of our births - that our ancestors all they way back to primordial soup days, happened to survive to pair up and procreate with whom and when they did. If one iota had been different - a different sperm hitting a different egg? We'd not had existed.

A teacher who happened to inspire someone to love science and set them on that career trajectory might have chosen to be a scientist rather than teach it, and instead that year a kid could have had a teacher who loved music and the child became inspired to take up the violin rather than test tubes.
 
@dilettante, I am a believer in that we don't plan on failing, but we fail to plan. I've seen a lot of people who haven't ever made a plan in their lives & sadly it shows. Even sadder is when they affect others around them & are clueless to what they've done (or not done).

I'm not a believer that life is the luck of the draw without control. I believe we face what happens & make decisions on how we handle it. I've read & heard too many stories about individuals coming from bad situations who decided they weren't going to live that way & were determined to make a better life for themselves & theirs.

Can we be influenced by another person in our lives? Yes. But, then I come back that the one being influenced has to make a decision for themselves ... either do what they were told or to follow a different path.

I've had people in my life that told me that I couldn't or wasn't able to or wouldn't allow me to do something. In each circumstance I made a decision to not listen to them & went forward with my decision that I was going to do it prove them wrong & get ahead.

Now we have all seen or known people who constantly make bad decisions or no decision at all. For them, you can't help them. If you try, you'll only drive yourself nuts doing so.
 
We have quite a bit of control of our lives. We make decisions all the time, and that is our choices. It is our fate that is filled with mystery, surprise, bad/good luck. That's the game. IT comes down to navigating our lives in a constantly changing environment that defines a life...really of all life. ( animals, birds, fish, insects, plants trees, etc )
 
Most often we make micro decisions based on macro circumstances thrust upon us. I likely would never have met my husband had I not gone on a job interview (for what turned out to be the worst job I'd ever had). He and I worked together for less than a month, so if I'd joined that company later we wouldn't have crossed paths.

Meeting him was macro luck. A spin on the giant wheel of chance that I didn't even know was in front of me, nevermind what the stakes were. .

Some of our decisions and choices along the way seemed at the time to be micro tweaks for us, but were all the difference in the universe to others. For instance, for our children our family planning (or in the case of our twins, lack thereof), those apparently unimportant decisions set in motion their very existence.
 
StarSong said:
I read the non-fiction "Flukes" by Brian Klaas recently. (Well, most of it. Kinda got repetitive and the gist is explained within the first several chapters.) The essence: our life paths are far more dependent on flukes, luck, happenstance, etc., than planning and complete self-determination. Consider the tremendous accident of our births - that our ancestors all they way back to primordial soup days, happened to survive to pair up and procreate with whom and when they did. If one iota had been different - a different sperm hitting a different egg? We'd not had existed.

A teacher who happened to inspire someone to love science and set them on that career trajectory might have chosen to be a scientist rather than teach it, and instead that year a kid could have had a teacher who loved music and the child became inspired to take up the violin rather than test tubes.
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I agree with everything except for the primordial soup idea.
 
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Rose65 said:
Let's face it, the unexpected can happen in a moment. We do not know what the next second holds so how far can we plan?
We can insure ourselves to the hilt but still be crushed by fate anytime.
We make decisions at the time, circumstances can change so much. Life is such a lottery from cradle to grave, length of life absolutely unknowable.
This can be seen as a positive or negative.
Click to expand...

Hello, Rose65.

We have some control over our lives. But for many reasons, it's not absolute or definitive.

For example, we live in a society, and society is made up of rules (laws) and customs. I don't have the choice to drive at 100MPH in the US without being held to account for it. I didn't have the ability to drive to work in DC at 55MPH because route 66 in the morning is a nightmare.

Then you must consider that we don't live alone. We're among a complex web of other people and their dreams, intentions, and actions. These may intersect with our own choices and both add or remove options. This applies to both humans (family, friends, neighbors) and our economic systems (banks, insurance etc.)

Within a set of parameters, we have some control. What we wear, whether we talk to anyone today, whom we marry, etc. But in absolute terms, no, we don't have complete control.

IMO.
 
Jeni said:
The idea there is No control and no reason to have any effort to try .......... is why we have so many people in bad situations... and a victim mentality everywhere.

Personal responsibility and common sense has kept me out of many problems .... is it fool proof ....NO ... but lowering the risk is what we do in everything....
Click to expand...
When events happen to us and outside forces challenge us, it's how we cope with them that either lessens or worsens their impact on our life and the lives of people who depend on us daily.

I agree, the victim mindset invites life-long bad situations. So do instilled fear, distrust, and narcissism, and the triplets; dependency, insecurity, and inferiority.

When I hear a parent berating their toddler or shutting them up with candy or a new toy, or raging at their partner or even at strangers, as tho' the kid isn't even there, I know they're creating an adult who's going to have a shiddy time of it their whole adult life. And I just want to take the kid home. Either that or tell the parent to text a friend, take some selfies, play a video game or whatever, just leave the poor kid alone ffs.
 

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