You can do everything right....

Life Was Never Meant to Be Controlled

"Do everything right, all the time, and the child will prosper. It's as simple as that, except for fate, luck, heredity, chance and the astrological sign under which the child was born, his order of birth, his first encounter with evil, the girl who jilts him in spite of his excellent qualities, the war that is being fought when he is a young man, the drugs he may try one or too many times, the friends he makes, how he scores on tests, how well he endures kidding about his shortcomings, how ambitious he becomes, how far he falls behind, circumstantial evidence, ironic perspective, danger when it is least expected, difficulty in triumphing over circumstances, people with hidden agendas, and animals with rabies."

-- Ann Beattie

I still smile every time I read that passage.

It's funny because it's exaggerated.

It's profound because it isn't.

Beneath the humor is a simple truth: life has never been as controllable as we'd like to believe.

Of course we should make thoughtful decisions. We should care for our health, nurture our relationships, work hard, save wisely, and do our best to raise our children with love and integrity.

Those things matter.

But they are not guarantees.

Marketing often tells us that if we just follow the right formula, buy the right program, adopt the right morning routine, invest in the right strategy, or discover the next breakthrough, success will naturally follow.

Sometimes it does.

Sometimes it doesn't.

Life is wonderfully responsive to wisdom, but it has never been completely predictable.

There are simply too many variables beyond our control.

For much of my life, I thought flourishing meant learning how to eliminate uncertainty.

I'm no longer convinced that's possible.

I think flourishing begins when we stop expecting life to cooperate with our plans and instead learn how to participate wisely in the life that is actually unfolding.

That doesn't mean becoming passive.

It doesn't mean giving up.

It means replacing the exhausting pursuit of control with a growing capacity to meet reality as it is.

When disappointment comes, we acknowledge it.

When fear arises, we make room for it instead of pretending it isn't there.

When shame appears, we respond with compassion rather than self-condemnation.

When life becomes difficult—as it inevitably does - we remember that difficulty is not evidence that we're failing.

It's evidence that we're alive.

Ironically, when we stop demanding that life be easy, we often discover a deeper ease within ourselves.

We become less preoccupied with controlling every circumstance and more interested in cultivating qualities that no circumstance can take away: courage, humility, gratitude, resilience, kindness, wisdom, and love.

Perhaps that's what flourishing really is.

Not a life without uncertainty.

Not a life where everything goes according to plan.

But a life in which we gradually become the kind of person who can meet whatever comes with an open heart, a grounded presence, and the quiet confidence that we don't have to control everything in order to live well.

Ann Beattie's wonderful passage reminds me that life has always been gloriously complicated.

The invitation has never been to master every variable.

It's to become someone who can flourish anyway.