After a series of unlucky incidents in my life, I have always found comfort going to my dad. He handles situations so calmly even at times when I often think he shouldn't. His outlook on life ensures me how lucky I am despite my unlucky situations. In one phone call, in under two minutes and in few words he made a mark on how I will carry out my life here on out.
"You can control everything you can control, but what you can't control you learn how to cope and do what you can." So often, the stresses of life leave us feeling uncontrollable and helpless. Simple situations like bad grades on exams, silly life incidents and the way the sun shines are all things we have literally no control over. I am a control freak and I am the first to admit it. I plan out my day and when things suddenly fall out of order or don't go according to the plan I have a slight freak out. Sometimes these uncontrollable events account for some of my best memories. Sometimes I am happy things ventured from my plan because maybe my plan wasn't so good anyway.
Other times, I feel helpless when things I can't control stop me from accomplishing my daily tasks or stop me from "following my plan." While I can accept the uncontrollable things that turn out to be better than expected, I have a hard time accepting things that I can't control that prove to have no benefit to my life.
But here is where the wisdom comes and where the turning point in the story is. If I lived my life by the minutes and seconds rather than the tasks each day, I would stop freaking out about all those uncontrollable factors. Because when you realize that the uncontrollable factors happen every single day, you realize the best way to prepare for them is not to prepare at all. And when you finally accept that trying to control every aspect of life only creates stress because duh we can't control everything, then you will be much happier. So from here on out, I will control what I can, but what I can't I'll cope with. So if let's say my car gets stolen and I completely freak out, I will do better to cope with what's happening instead of trying to control what I can't.
Thanks, dad for always shedding a light of wisdom in my life and taking the messiest of situations to challenge who I REALLY am and what life is REALLY about.
