Closing Thoughts, 23: On the futility of 'being in control'

It has been ‘depressing cold’ or maybe it’s just that my bout with flue has made me look at everything with a shade of sickness for last 2 weeks. Being sick is a terrible thing especially if you are alone, the world closes in. It has been like a system failure. First fever, then throat, then stomach, then back to throat, then weakness and sleeplessness. I battled through with my affirmations, gratitude journaling and sitting in sun whenever it came. I can’t run or cycle because of a knee injury, reading books & seeing movies I try to move into a parallel world of imagination leaving behind my sick world.

Today, I was looking at the tulsi plants I had planted a week back and with whom I shared my sunny space whenever the sun decided to come out. Some days the plants would look full of life and some days I will find many leaves scattered near it’s roots. I would promptly use it in tea for my sickness. Today looking at them I realized that one will die despite my best nurturing - watering, putting coco-peat, moving it around so it gets enough sun. And I was hoping the other will survive. The days are cloudy and cold, despite all our technology we cannot predict when sun will come out and no one can predict the life or death of a plant or us. 

We all love to control, from teams to family to project outcomes despite 100’s of variables, but can we or is it just a sense of control which we want to have despite knowing that you cannot. 

After Baba’s death & the uncertainties of COVID but more so in my last 1 year of starting life afresh I have started accepting the fact that we actually cannot control anything. Earlier I used to keep complaining on the lack of sun or the lack of a something which I wanted desperately but some time back I just stopped realizing the futility of it all. It only builds expectation, anxiety and lot of mutual angst. Like the eluding Banglore sun - If it’s there make the best of it if not do what you can to protect yourself from the cold. 

I realized that, we can only make a choice which we feel are wise at that point based on all the wisdom we have gained in our past. This in my mind is a culmination of experiences and the memory of those experiences stored in our brain. 

Once we make the choice, we have to just walk the path we have chosen.

Sun or no sun. Welcome 20 24