"Control" is relative.

Me: i hate that, when you can feel the wind pushing your car and you feel like you're not in control of it
Me: haha i guess that would make a good metaphor in a story for life.

I said that tonight. I realized lately how much I don't like not feeling in control of my own life any more. I used to kind of embrace that. But I guess I also used to trust very much that there was some greater force at work, that life just happens the way it happens and there's nothing I can do about it - I just have to roll with it. Then I started having those dreams where my teeth fall out of my mouth randomly, and I guess that was the end of that.

Thinking about this reminded me of June '06. I was walking around with someone one day, and I said how I like the idea that there's something bigger than me in control, and of course, that everything happens for the good. He said he hated that - he hated the idea that he isn't completely in control of his own life. I guess I can understand that better now than I could before. It's funny, I tell people that kind of stuff all the time - that you just do what you can and that's all, that whatever happens, happens, you can't control what other people do, only what you do yourself - and other more hopeful, optimistic viewpoints. It's a wonder that anyone listens to me any more, cause I don't exactly live by that any more. I know I should, and it's really one of those "Do as I say, not as I do" things, but really, I know me - I wouldn't be saying this stuff still if, deep down, I didn't really believe in it.

That reminds me of In Good Company. Topher Grace is in the ad business because he's a hotshot young executive with a life plan to fulfill. Dennis Quaid is the old pro in advertising because he really honestly believes in it - that he's doing a good thing in helping a man promote his independent business, and that sort of thing. Topher realizes advertising isn't for him - that when he does choose a career, he wants to believe in it the way Dennis believes in selling ad space in magazines. I always loved that movie. But I digress.

After mock trial the other day, I was talking to one of the kids who was an attorney this year. They had lost 2/3 of their matches that day; I felt bad for them. Anyway, the one kid says to me, "If there's one thing I've learned, reinforced is probably the better word...it's so important to ensure that you have as much control as possible over your own fate, because once things go from objective to subjective, you've lost the battle." I think I like that. Well, I don't really like it. But I think it's true.

It's strange. When I was little, my parents did teach me that life isn't fair. I learned that life isn't fair, even though it should be, and that even though it isn't, I should treat others fairly, if not mercifully. And I always tried to live up to that. I've realized that even though, based on what I was taught, I didn't exactly expect others to do the same, be the same - fair and forgiving - on some level, I expected people that I respected and was close to, to do that. I think I knew better than to expect people I don't know to live that way, but I don't think I knew enough to expect people that I trusted and respected not to live like that. I didn't know better than to realize that just because I trusted and respected them, and tried to be just and forgiving, that didn't mean that they were going to treat me fairly and mercifully. I wish I had realized that sooner.

Sometimes I wonder if everything really does happen for a reason. In little ways though. Like my abysmal timing. How I manage to run into people when, if I had gone that way just seconds later or earlier, I wouldn't have seen them. Or like, if I drop a folder and have to stop and pick up everything that was in it, but then on my way to class I see someone I wouldn't have seen if I hadn't had to stop and pick up my stuff. That kind of thing. And then I wonder why it is that I had to run into those people. Sometimes it's people that I like seeing; sometimes it's people that I generally hope/think I'll never see again. But even like, the idea that there are no coincidences. "Coincidence is cancelled today," as Eddie Dean would say. Who was it...someone else said, "Everything has a purpose, and it serves you." Or Shakespeare:

"Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from human haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything."
- As You Like It

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