I have come to the realization over the last few years, that I need to gain some sort of control back in my life. I had looked down every alley, opened every door, rambled through the cabinets, and dusted off the memories files away in my mind searching for the control that I had lost. After a few weeks of searching every avenue possible, I came to an astounding conclusion…Control is an illusion. Man’s need for control, from the earliest days of men, has caused him to conjure up the idea that he could buy, learn, train, prepare, retain, detain, or delay in order to gain control over his situation. We need control to feel better about our individual situations. It makes us feel like the unexpected is not a reality. If we can control life, we can control destiny, and this control leads to security and comfort. The reality I found is this…we can control three things in our lives.
First, we can control what we take into our bodies. There are four categories of bodily consumption. What you see, what you eat, what you hear, what touches you. You can eat healthy, or you can choose to ignore the quality of food you consume. Most likely, no one will ever stuff a Big Mac or donuts into your mouth. What you eat is purely your choice...a decision that is totally in your hands. Even though we have control in this area, it is not without its exceptions. Did you know that a food manufacturer can grind up a cow hooves, cartilage, intestines, etc. and make a hamburger patty out of it, and our FDA allows them to stamp this patty with a 100% Beef label because it all came from a cow’s body. Very little beef we purchase from fast food establishments is actual meat/muscle tissue by majority.
The air around you touches your body internally and externally. Unfortunately, unless you live in a controlled vacuum, you are forced to breathe the air around you daily. This air is not as pure as it could be, due to pollutants; therefore we are forced to breathe it as it is available to us. We can choose to live in less polluted cities, or at elevations where smog is not as present, but it is still our option to care about what we breathe. Our society has become one of acceptance when it comes to this. There are plenty of Green organizations that are fighting to clean up the air of our planet, but the fight is a tough one when the numbers of people who are active against the quality of air, which has developed over the last 50 years, are so few.
The third issue of control falls in the category of what we see. Our society has based its structure on the visual. The colors and designs of everything in our world have come to matter to an extreme sense. Cars are sleeker, clothes are sexier, tanned bodies are better than pale ones, women and men need to look like movie stars in order to gain the successes of the world. This concept of the visual appeal trickles down to the even smallest areas of life. When you go into a convenience store to purchase a drink, you make a choice based on several things. What flavor does your mouth tell you to buy, what color of liquid appeals to you, which is the most cost effective for your situation, and believe it or not, which bottle shape do you like the most. Coke has changed the shape of the plastic bottle of their product several times in the last 15 years in hopes to find the most effective style to appeal to the public. We can’t change what shows up in front of our eyes, but we do have control in one way…we can choose to learn to see the forest instead of focusing on the tree.
What we hear affects us as much as what we see, if not more. At the conception of music, it was very limited in comparison to today’s selection. We have Country, Rap, Hip-Hop, Gospel, Bluegrass, Blues, Jazz, and on and on and on. Each musical style has been influenced by another style, and artistic expression has taken music to an all-time boundless entity. We also hear other people on a daily basis. The words others use, the dialects we hear, the terms and phrases, and the audible attitudes around us, all affect us even when we are unaware of it. Have you ever started a new relationship with someone and noticed that after a few months of being around them, you started to use phrases that that person uses on a regular basis. Have you noticed that when a northerner moves to the south, they eventually lose their northern draw and pick up a southern one. What we hear is out of our control. Unless you are unfortunate enough to be deemed deaf, our ears work regardless of the circumstance. We hear a lot in a single day, but what we listen to is a different story. The definition of listening is “to give attention with the ear; attend closely for the purpose of hearing; give ear”. It also means “to pay attention; heed; obey”. But to truly understand how to listen, I think it takes and understanding of the three separate definitions combined. The third definition gives us a little more insight into the passion and soul of listening…”to wait attentively for a sound”. Attentively is the most important attribute of listening in my personal opinion. We can choose to listen to the things that are truth. We can choose to listen to things that educate us, and make us more aware of the truths around us. If we can learn to see the forest instead of the trees, we can learn to hear the truth in the world.
The second area we have control is in the area of what we say. We are the only ones who can speak the words we speak. No one can make you say anything you don't want to say, with the possible exception of holding you at gunpoint. But, for us to choose to speak or not to speak, and to choose what words we use when speaking, is completely our God given right as humans. Our founding Fathers knew this when they gave us as Americans the Freedom of Speech. But just because you have the right to speak, doesn't always mean that you should. The one thing that will always be true, is that once you say it, there is no taking it back. You can apologize for the wrong choice, but the words are out there forever. We have control over what we say, and we need to treat this liberty with respect. Society has gotten very loose in the area of verbal communication. America thinks that freedom of speech means that you can say whatever you want without consequence. When you exercise your right to it, you still have to face the consequences of the words. The point is that we do have control over the words we use, and that is powerful in itself. And with power comes responsibility. America, exercise your responsibility and choose wisely.
The third and final area of control is in how we treat others. We can chose to harbor ill will, or we can forgive. We can do for others, or we can expect others to do for us. We can hold onto the thread of self-entitlement that we have gotten accustomed to, or we can willingly do for those who do not do for us in return. We have a choice to curse that driver for cutting us off on the way to work, or we can choose to try to understand that they may just not have seen us. They may be running late for work and this may be their last warning and they may be facing termination. They may be in the middle of tragic circumstance, or a terrible family situation, and they may be in a state of mind that is not lending itself to the drive ahead of them. We can chose to try to walk in others shoes, and understand from their perspective, or we can chose to see the situation from our own perspective and maintain a selfishness that causes our quality of life to deteriorate daily.
We have control over these few things in our life, and it is our luxury to be able to exercise this control for our benefit. I know that I can become complacent in society and accept what it tells me, shows me, or decides for me. But I don’t want to be a circumstance of trend, or society's choices. I choose to look at my life and ask myself if I think that I have to look a certain way, or if I care about what I allow into my body. I have the choice to hear the world, or listen to the truth. I have a choice and a responsibility to live inside my own box, outside my own box, or to live in the confines of the control of the world we live in. We have such little actual control, isn't it our responsibility to take that small amount of control and use it to our absolute advantage? I think so...
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