You obviously always want to control the circumstances surrounding you, but on not infrequent occasions those circumstances—all willingness aside—will take control over your body instead and render you a helpless bystander. Call it fate or destiny or fortune if you want; an outcome is far more crucial than the method of arriving at it, ergo methodology is essentially immaterial anyway. We exercise control over some of the vagaries attending our lives, but that percentage is so miniscule as to be virtually meaningless. Life is akin to a mammoth block of granite that we continually chip away at in an attempt to sculpt something of lasting beauty from the monolithic object. If we’re appropriately patient and work earnestly at this Sisyphean task, over a period of many years we’ll make progress on our redoubtable block of granite—impressive, noticeable progress even. Yet we’re never granted sufficient time to complete our crusade or to markedly transform that giant chunk of rock into anything other than its original iteration. The lesson to be garnered from all this? In the end learn to be satisfied with a job unfinished since that is an exact microcosm for the lives we human beings lead.
Fred's Soapbox 