The Daily Stoic Control and Choice
"The main task of life is to understand and distinguish matters so that they can tell themselves clearly what is an out-of-control external tame and what is involved in a real-control choice, so where can I look for good and bad, not from an out-of-control external matter, but from an internal matter of my own choice...."
- Epictetas-
When we open our eyes, the most important routine is to distinguish between what we can change and what we can't change, between what we have influence over it and what we don't have. If we wake up today, it rains heavily, floods, can't travel to work in time. No matter how frustrated, angry, or complaining, it can't make the water drop or the rain stop. And no matter how hard we try our whole lives, it can't make someone like us. And you know, while we try to do things that we can't change, we lose time that we should do what we do. Or what we can do and change.
If we say anything, that's something we can't control anymore, we can only control ourselves for the outcome, and what follows from what we say, for good or bad, we can choose and control what we do next.
No matter how bad our past has been, that's something we can't go back to, and what we can do is this moment where we can control the choices we make now so we can change our direction to change our future.
If we can distinguish every day what parts of our lives we can control and lose control of, we will feel happier and not caught up in a battle we can never win.
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