“Almost everything that happens is either a good time or a good story.”
1: It was the weekend. The family drove into the countryside for a picnic.
“Just as they’d laid an impressive lunch spread on the blanket,” Oliver Burkeman writes in Meditations for Mortals, “the heavens opened, but on this occasion, the parents let the kids eat anyway, in a pandemonium of wet sandwiches and laughter.”
This experience is a treasured memory of one of the sisters, “a glowing gem among her recollections of childhood,” Oliver writes, “and what makes that so interesting, to me, is how utterly unexceptional it is.
“Plenty of straightforwardly undesirable things happen to all of us, from the mildly annoying to the tragic,” he notes.
“Almost everyone, when prompted, can reel off a few tales in which events slipped out of their control,” Oliver writes, “the weather failed to cooperate, the flight got canceled, they showed up at the wrong address—and either something wonderful happened or, at worst, they acquired an anecdote with which to entertain themselves and others for years to come.”
Examples include “a period of despair they’d have avoided entirely, if they could possibly have done so, such as a struggle with addiction, or a terrifying diagnosis; or else some seemingly mundane incident that proved pivotal, like the party at which they met their future spouse, or the dashed-off email that unexpectedly landed them a job.”
2: Consider the fact that we are alive right now. Reading this blog post. How many billions of events and actions collided together to make this moment a reality?
As the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir writes: “The penetration of that particular ovum by that particular spermatozoon, with its implications of the meeting of my parents and before that of their birth and the birth of all their forebears, had not one chance in hundreds of millions of coming about.”
Despite “the strange benefits that so often seem to arise from our lack of control,” we remain convinced that to achieve happiness or contentment, we must be more in control.
“The driving cultural force of that form of life we call ‘modern’ is the idea, the hope and desire, that we can make the world controllable,” observes the German social theorist Hartmut Rosa.
“In his magnum opus Resonance,” Oliver writes, “and a follow-up work, The Uncontrollability of the World, Hartmut shows how all kinds of disparate human endeavors fit together when understood as attempts to do that very thing.”
Our desire to feel more in control explains all sorts of human behaviors.
Like: “The quest to dominate nature; progress in medicine; the growth of military power; digital connectivity, which lets us keep abreast of what’s happening thousands of miles away, and air travel, which brings far-off places within reach; helicopter parenting, dieting, in-vitro fertilization, Elon Musk’s proposed colonization of Mars, and lab-grown meat,” Hartmut writes.
Is the desire for more control a bad thing? Of course not.
Hartmut “certainly doesn’t deny that the quest for controllability has brought incalculable benefits,” Oliver shares. “After all, it’s behind virtually everything that makes life today so much freer from unremitting poverty and pain than it was in medieval times.”
And yet our desire to be in control also works against our desire to live happy and rewarding lives.
As in “the human domination of nature has caused nature to escape human control, threatening our flourishing through runaway climate disruption,” Oliver writes. “The more people with whom we’re able to connect digitally, the worse the loneliness epidemic gets; and the more vigilance parents exert over their children’s comfort, the more anxious and uncomfortable they are.”
The more we attempt to control all things, the more we realize how little control we really have.
And “the more daily life loses what Hartmut calls its resonance, its capacity to touch, move and absorb us,” Oliver notes.
3: Getting better at getting better is what RiseWithDrew is all about.
Monday through Thursday, we explore ideas from authors, thought leaders, and exemplary organizations.
At the end of each week, we’ve been exploring some of the lessons Oliver shares in his wonderful book, Meditations for Mortals.
Consider: What happens when something comes under our complete control?
“It feels cold and dead,” he observes. “A work of art you fully understand or a person whose behavior you can predict with total accuracy is no fun at all.”
Life at its best involves what Oliver calls a “reciprocal relationship with the rest of the world, including other people; we might liken it to a dance in which we alternately lead and follow.
“Whereas a relationship in which you unquestionably have the upper hand at all times is no relationship at all.”
As a society, our desire for control often diminishes our ability to do meaningful work.
“If we’re a teacher or a social worker, if we work in academia or healthcare or the charity sector, or if we’re close to somebody in any of these roles, we’ll be familiar with how virtually everyone in such fields complains about barely having time to do their jobs, these days, thanks to all the admin involved in doing their jobs. That paperwork results from their employers’ efforts to render the processes of their work controllable, by making it transparent and measurable.”
Which chips away at the opportunities for human connection.
“The point is a subtle one, Hartmut notes, because a resonant relationship with life depends on its being semi-controllable, not totally uncontrollable.
“We need to engage actively in the world – to connect to others, to make plans, and to pursue opportunities and ambitions—and people need the freedom, and the economic resources, to be able to do that.”
Nothing much good happens if we sit around, cut off from others, waiting for things to happen. Or if we’re spending every waking moment struggling to stay alive.
“Still, it’s central to an enjoyable and meaningful life that whenever we reach out to the world in this way, we don’t get to control how it responds,” Oliver explains. “The value and depth of the experience relies on that unknowability. . .
“In some profound way,” he writes, “it’s a good thing. Not being able to guarantee that our plans will come off; not knowing what the future holds; never quite feeling like we’ve got things figured out, or that we’re on top of things—all of these are mysteriously central to what makes life worth living.”
Maybe we will get exactly what we wanted. Or perhaps we won’t.
“And sometimes,” Oliver observes, “not getting what you wanted will leave life immeasurably better.”
Like a sunny day for a picnic in the countryside.
More next week!
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Reflection: Am I trying to control every detail of my life, or can I let go and find joy in the spontaneity and unpredictability of everyday moments?
Action: Today, notice one situation where I feel compelled to control the outcome—then pause, accept whatever unfolds, and see what unexpected goodness or a good story might arise.
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