We all enjoy the feeling of being in control, the feeling that whatever is happening to us or is going to happen to us will do so because of choices and actions that we make.
Of course, as is the case more times than some of us feel comfortable with, we find ourselves going along for the ride, open to the whims of others and the unpredictability of the world.
When things aren't going well, it's almost like absolutely nothing is going according to plan. You may try to fight it. You may try to balance the scales by seizing control of whatever you can. That may work for some, but it may be more necessary to keep your sanity by going with the flow and being guided by the bumbling missteps you are encountering.
Recently, I found myself travelling as everything went wrong around me, stretching what should have been a roughly 12-hour journey, no short trip in its own right, into a 50-hour marathon of misery. Getting stuck in a series of errors and missed connections like that can be frustrating and taxing, both physically and emotionally. It's mentally draining to feel your brain go numb and your vision foggy.
It was easy to look back at all the things that went wrong and add them all up to a sum that proved the most obvious theory at the end of the long trip: The universe is, by all accounts, out to get me.
That's the pessimist's outlook on things. That's how the weary traveler sees his pained predicament. And it's easy enough to fall into that trap of succumbing to Murphy's Law and ultimately expecting everything to go wrong with complete bitterness and suspicion about how things might get worse every minute after the last.
It's very easy to get down on yourself. It's hard to put the past where it belongs: In the past, where it can't be changed and can only be learned from. It's in those times it's important to remember to move forward.
I try to be unfazed by bad news, shrugging off those things that can't be changed by asking what can be done next to ease our suffering a little. There is always time for reflection later, but when things need to be done and there is no way to slow the world down it can be toxic to focus on everything that goes wrong.
As everyone likes to say about those situations, "One day, it will make a great story. One day, you'll look back on it and laugh."
The best way to seize control is to control yourself. We can't always control what happens to us, but we can always control how we react to it. We always have control over how we choose to look at our sour situations. We will always get to choose our disposition.
I try to look at the end of the trip, because I know whatever is going awry, at some point it will stop. At some point we'll get home.
While I can't control everything that happens along the way, I can always make sure I get through it with a little grace, happy with the way I handled an uncomfortable and trying situation. In those times of stress and fatigue we learn a little something about ourselves, and at the very least, I'm glad I learned something.
