“What matters to an active man is to do the right thing; whether the right thing comes to pass should not bother him.”
—Goethe
One of my priorities in life is to love my family. That can be a little challenging when three of those family members are teenagers. It would be easy to get frustrated during these trying years, and I sometimes do. Especially when an attempt to tell my son, “I love you,” is met with an emphatic “Go Away!”
How does one keep there cool and develop an attitude that allows them to keep loving their kids and do their job when their efforts go unrewarded? If you work hard for something and don’t get it, how do you keep going? How do you develop an attitude that makes you impervious to the frustrations of the world?
As a surgeon, I have to face bad situations with a calm, confident demeanor, and the determination to make the best of the problem given to me. I wasn’t always able to do this. It did not come naturally to me. I have spent more hours than I care to remember in angry rages over the world’s injustices, the failure of the medical system in general, the hospital were I work in particular, and myself. None of which ever did me one bit of good. I just ended up in the middle of the same problem, but red-faced and disappointed with myself.
Then I found a profound bit of wisdom from two-thousand years ago that slowly sunk in and changed how I view the world and my actions.
“Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions.”
— Epictetus
Those words sound wiser when you know they were spoken by a crippled former Greek slave turned stoic philosopher. Not being of that pedigree, I often paraphrase his statement into my own rural Iowa wisdom by saying; you can’t control how others drive, but you can buckle your seatbelt.
To take advantage of this wisdom, I needed to put it into action. After all, knowledge only becomes power when you put it into action. To do that, I needed to learn four lessons.
The Four Lessons;
The first lesson I needed to learn was; I do not control the universe. It is sheer hubris to think that we can control everything or that the world should bend itself to our will. The world spins on with no notice of us. Other people are too absorbed in their problems to pay attention to you. You can’t control the events of the world nor the thoughts and actions of others. All you can control is yourself, your attitude, opinions, wants, and actions. All of the rest is outside of your control. Getting mad does not change that. Making yourself miserable because the world or someone in it did not give you what you wanted is a childish tactic that hurts you more than anyone else. I can’t bend the universe to my will, and neither can you.
The second lesson I needed to learn was to; Separate what I can control from what I cannot. I cannot control what patients come to me in the Emergency Department. I can’t control how they got sick or injured. I can’t control how my teenagers respond when I tell them I love them. Those external events and the responses of others are outside of my control. There is no use in getting upset about them or demanding that they be different because those things are outside of my ability to control.
The third lesson I needed to learn was to; Take radical responsibility for what I can control. I may not be able to control how my son responds when I show him love. I can control how I respond. Despite my son’s response, I can continue to love him. I can continue to tell him I love him even if it gets me an exasperated, “Ahhh…. Go away!” I can choose not to get angry or frustrated that the exchange did not go as I had hoped. I can still love my son with my whole heart because that is what I can control. How he responds to that is outside of my control.
The fourth lesson I needed to learn was to; Do the best with what I can control. I cannot control what kind of people need my services as a surgeon. Often they come to me with multiple medical issues that complicate their surgical care. If I could choose, I would pick only healthy patients. But I don’t get that option. I have to take them as they come; diabetes, heart disease, obesity, renal failure, and more, often in the same patient. These extraneous factors complicate surgical care and increase the risk of complications and even death. I can’t make those co-morbidities go away. All I can do is my best work. I can give them an efficient and effective surgery and then take responsibility and treat the other factors as best I can. The outcome of their illnesses may not be in my command, but how I approach them is. When I do my best to address what I can control, I sleep better regardless of the outcome.
The last part may be the hardest; Let go of what is outside of your control. Recognize that much of what happens is outside of your control, so let go of what you cannot control. Letting go does not mean giving up. This rule only applies when you have recognized what you can manage and done your best with it. After that, what is left are things outside of your control. There is no point in wasting effort and stress on things you do not have control over. Save that energy to focus on what you can do. Let the rest go.
Letting the things outside of your control go may sound hard, but it can be made more accessible. To make it easier, focus your effort on lessons two and three; recognize what you control and take full responsibility for that. If you assumed radical responsibility for what you could manage and did your best, letting the rest go will come more naturally. The usual problem in letting go is regretting that we did not do more. That regret is mitigated when you know you did your best with what was in your power.
A note on Worry
Where people make themselves miserable is worrying about things that are outside of their control. Worry is a thief that robs us of our peace of mind and our ability to make the situation better. Anxiety is a cheat because it gives you a false sense of control over things you can’t control. By worrying, you get tricked into thinking we are doing something when you are not. Worrying fools you into wasting effort on things you can’t control while keeping you from putting your energy where it can make a difference. Worry is waste. Don’t worry about the things you can’t control, take control of the things you can.
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” — Marcus Aurelius
Getting back to my cantankerous teenagers (is that a redundant statement?), I keep in mind that I can control my love for them. I can’t control how they respond to that love. I would like it if they returned it with an “I love you too,” and a hug, but their response is outside my control. So I do my best to love them in my heart and show it to them in ways big and small. I may not get the reaction I hoped for, but I know that I did my best and lived up to my value. I can still feel good about myself. Besides, I know that deep down those rude little shits hear what I am saying and like to listen to it no matter how they act on the outside. So I keep doing what I know is in my control (loving my kids), I do it as best I can, and I don’t let their response perturb me, because their reactions are outside of my control. So I let it go.
“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own…”
— Epictetus, Discourses, 2.5.4–5
Or,
You can’t control how others drive, but you can buckle your seatbelt.
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