As Reinhold Neibuhr once famously said…

I reflect on this quote a lot more than I should, and every single year it means something slightly different.

I rather like my interpretation this year and the thoughts that have come out from it, and so I share them here.

When I was a child, I had a whole list of ideas of what people must be like as they grew older.

Older people were richer because the universe made them so – they were married because their partners were brought into their lives; they were fatter because a divine ordinance made their bodies expand; things happened automatically because they were simply ‘meant to be’.

I now see that a lot of this was wrong-headed, and came about because of intellectual laziness that I no longer consider valid.

As time passed, I saw that things were not so simple.

People became rich because they worked for it either hard or smart – they got married because they had relationships with people, romantic and then sexual, that they decided to make into family ties; they were fatter because they were often sedentary as part of a modern condition; things could happen because of chance, but in all likelihood people could steer the ship far more effectively than they could give themselves credit for but even then lose themselves in the comforting soma of a ‘fate’ narrative.

Well, comfort is a beautiful thing.

In some instances, it’s even necessary.

After all, there are lots of things in this world where what you believe and what I believe are opposed, but circumstances are uncertain and neither of us might be right – in this situation, how should we think and navigate the world?

It would be easy for one person to conclude that well, because fate is a thing, it doesn’t matter what we do – there will be an outcome anyway, and we should go with the flow.

See, I think that works in some instances – for example, when you’re thinking about things that you frankly don’t care very much about or that the outcomes of which, if you’re honest with yourself and true to what you believe and know, aren’t really relevant to you.

But if you decide to never work because you think financial status is destined, you will be poor; if you never talk to people because you believe people are ‘fated’, you will end up friendless and with no partner; if you assume your physical condition is tied to a metaphysical entity and your preferred God while shoving anything and everything into your body as and when you like, you will end up three hundred kilos overweight, living in hospital beds, and enjoying the benefits of heart disease, diabetes, and possibly at least three different cancers even as you wallow in self-inflicted moral masochism that you call pain.

There are many things in this world that we can indeed control, and that we should certainly take control of.

Those that are not?

Perhaps it’s best not to think about them – it’s not like your mind can control them, so best just to focus on changing how you see them, to ignore them, or to bring them into the sphere or domain of what you can control.

At least, that’s how I think of things now.