Nostalgia is a Privilege Granted to Those Who Are Alive

"Getting control of your life" is a phrase that gets repeated far too often these days. Everyone is in pursuit of some ambiguous amount of influence over how thing happen to them and how things are done by them. What is too often forgotten is that control, the domination of circumstance, is not only impossible but also unnecessarily pursued. Everyone has control over their life. The decisions you make are the decisions that determine the path you walk.

The interactions, circumstances, and situations are all results of choices, good or bad, that place you in specific positions. For example, you have no control over falling rocks, but you have a choice in roads. The "control" that people want is the ability to omit chance or the ability to make choices over again. Neither of these abilities exist in the physical world, ergo the desire is extraneous baggage that ought to be dumped. "Getting control of my life" is a phrase used by people who feel anxiety about the pace or speed with which life unfolds. The point is, life is worth having no control over as long as you can remember how fast it comes at you and at what speed to ingest this world in any way you can.

Today I received word that one of my uncles has passed away. I'm not going to tell you his name but without a name there is no such thing as identity, so we'll call him Jim and we'll call his wife Jane. Jim died as a result of a short and surely painful bout with cancer. He had no desire to live his life in the hospital, or be schlepped around by other family members, encumbering themselves and their families with the rigorous treatment procedures that would have been prescribed to Jim.