There are many quotes about the inevitability of events happening. These can range from Martin Luther King, Jr, to Napoleon, Angela Davis, the list could go on and on. The point is that things happen. Things that are both within and without our control. I firmly believe we function to our fullest in terms of productivity, relational matters, mentally, and spiritually when we let go of what we cannot control but fiercely steer what we can control. All with some degree of level-headedness, of course. Just because you want to be President doesn’t mean you can just jump over the white house gate, open the door to the Oval Office, and say you are now the President (though some would take that option out of desperation.) What you can control is your path to get to your fulfilling goals.
I used to relent in all the things that were preventing me from doing what I wanted to do (including this blog!) It went from that I was too “normal,” wasn’t creative enough, wasn’t attractive enough, wasn’t big enough, wasn’t sexy enough…I had a million excuses. And then one day I just said, screw it. Sure, there are things I can’t control NOW, but there are so many things that I can control, one the most important being ATTITUDE. Think about it like this. When you are full after eating food, you usually don’t think about how hungry you are (or were.) It is not (or no longer is) a big deal to find food that you can eat to give you energy and keep you happy, moving, and thinking. Now think about when you are hungry. When you are hungry, and I mean REALLY hungry, the majority of your focus is on locating food. Even if you are also doing something else like driving, talking to a friend, or reading a blog ;), you are subconsciously still thinking about food.
So how am I connecting hunger with attitude? What if we equivocated our motivation to get food when we are not just hungry, but STARVING, with the desire to take action on the things we can control in our life. Huh? Doesn’t sound like an impossible task now. In fact, it may even MOTIVATE you to take action, as if you have to take the action to satisfy your satiation to TAKE ACTION ON WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL. From here, you may not get exactly what you might have been expecting, but there will definitely be some type of reaction. Even if that reaction is stagnation, rejection, or just pure nothingness. It technically is still something because you TOOK ACTION instead of just passively letting fate, nature, time, the Gods, whatever you want to call it, simply move through that window of opportunity in which you could have taken action. If anything, even if your actions on what you can control yield little to no results, you will inevitably gain the experience of acting upon something that directly impacted you no matter what. And if you really want to feel something, you can at least laugh at yourself for trying, failing, or succeeding. It’s hard to laugh at yourself for doing nothing. That’s just plain sad. So go ahead, MAKE YOUR DAY, in the spirit of Dirty Harry, though keep it classy, folks.
In Good Taste,
Funny, Fearful Guy of the Unknown
