The illusion of control

Yeah, so I am this chap who totally hates getting out of his house (out of his bed, to be totally honest), as almost all my friends will testify. And, the said friends automatically assume that, in these days of quarantine, it would feel no different from my regular days for me. And, to be honest, so did I.

Surprisingly, now that I am not allowed to go out, the great outdoors beckons to me enticingly. It seems a great deprivation to not step out, wade through those growling street dogs, to go to that neighborhood tea-shop and gulp down that brown mix of sugary hot water that he facetiously calls tea. And merely because I am not allowed to do it! When I never ever wanted to do it before!

This thing about control is really strange. When I was in control of my actions, I never had the urge to get out of the house, hated the idea, in fact. But now that I am forced to do exactly what I always choose to do...Merely BECAUSE it is no longer in my control, no longer my choice...

That's the thing about control, isn't it? That you feel you have a choice, the power of choosing one over the other is all yours. And, as long as you are given the illusion of being in control over your actions, your life, you are serene. The moment, however, you are made to feel that it is not your choice, that what happens to you is not in your control, fear, panic, mayhem! If, further, you start feeling that your government or, even humanity as a whole, is not in control of events, then...

Which is why, when people want to sway you, they give you the illusion of choice. THIS or THAT dreadful one? And you choose, THIS of course, feeling that it is your choice all along. Or, in times when nothing is in your control or seems like it, someone comes along and says "THOSE are the people responsible for it" and you go around bashing them up. And feel that you have taken control of your life and eliminated the drated thing which threatened your control over your life.

Or, even, hunting around hungrily for news, reading up day and night about it - the eternal human confidence that knowledge leads to control. (Knowing full well that knowledge could but YOUR knowledge of anything has failed, hitherto, in even controlling the daily delivery of your newspaper.) Not just the knowledge of the dos and don'ts but everything. Though, yes, as a first step to the most useful type of control - what is mentioned in the coming para, knowledge is useful. If, however, it does not serve that purpose...

And, yet, there is the one thing, the ONLY thing the sages say, which you truly can control - always and any time. You cannot control, always, what happens to you or around you but you can control how you feel about it. How you react to it. They call it the 'freedom from opposites' - indifference to joy or sorrow, success or failure etc etc.

I'll take recourse to English sayings, in these days when anything attributed to our sages is automatically considered superstitious nonsense. Kipling said "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two Impostors just the same; Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it.". And THAT is a state of mind, which is in your control, and not the Universe which, like it or lump it, is not.

Which is not to say, utter passivity. The point is about how you control your feelings, it is not about being supine. Do what you CAN. But replace panicked running around screaming 'We are doomed' with purposive action. Even if inaction is all the action that is possible to you.

THAT - the control over how YOU feel and react to whatever happens to you are around you - is the ONLY control which is not an illusion!