Locus of Control
“Some things are in our control, while others are not. We control our opinion, choice, desire, aversion, and, in a word, everything of our own doing. We don’t control our body, property, reputation, position, and, in a word, everything not of our own doing. Even more, the things in our control are by nature free, unhindered, and unobstructed, while those not in our control are weak, slavish, can be hindered, and are not our own.” —EPICTETUS, ENCHIRIDION, 1.1–2
Being indistinct about the reality of what we control and what we don’t control is the source of much mischief in my life and of those I know. I want to control my children, others around me, the person driving the car in front of me, the cat, the neighbor, the weather(!), on and on. I want to control other people’s actions: what they say to me, what they do around me, what they think. As it always fails, I would hope that I would learn. But keeping this distinct is something I wake up to over and over again.
As I read Epictetus’s list of what we control: our opinion, choice, desire, aversion. I think our culture still has a hold on the first two and would agree that our opinion and our choice we control. The second two, however, aren’t acknowledged as aspects of our life that we control. Take desire. My experience of desire is that it finds and controls me, that it comes and goes, and isn’t subject to my control the way I experience opinion or choice, which self-evidently it is clear that we choose. And similarly, aversion, which is opposite of desire, the anti-desire. Both of these show up as already in the background and not something I actively choose.
A powerful way to live is to live as if I choose everything. That if I roll the video of an event far enough, I will be clear that I was ‘at cause’ of whatever happens around me. The realization that, had I chosen differently along the way, the current results would be very different.
Our American culture is moving with momentum in the opposite direction of Epictetus on what we control. More on that another time.
January 10, 2017