Control....Under Glass on a Silver Platter

How altruistic.

Lessons that I (and others) have tried to pound into my head for years……trust yourself, follow your instincts, guide your destiny, make wise choices, learn from your mistakes.

Always, always go out the window. Generally because I can't simply accomplish the easiest one. Learn. From. Your. Mistakes. I think that, somewhere, if I could just do that, the rest would come to me more easily.

Advice, when unsolicited and free, is generally worth exactly what you gave for it. The good stuff is what you get when you swallow your pride and ask for help….which I'm also not very good at doing, at all. That free advice, many times, is of little help and, more times, puts one is worse position than the freefall at which one started.

But…..it's easier than original thought and true self evaluation, isn't it? And it oh-so-conveniently relieves oneself of personal responsibility. My boss told me to do it, my friend thought this would be a good idea, it's the way my family has always done it, it worked last time. And with the removal of personal responsibility comes the removal of personal freedom and identity. Those choices belong to the others, not you. Oh, and it didn't work last time, did it?

Fast forward a bit and you're left doing a brief, yet horrifying survey of your existence and wondering how the hell you ended up here. What happened? There's a struggle to identify that one, defining moment where everything started to unravel. But that moment is nowhere to be found. Because it doesn't exist. Instead, there are smaller, seemingly insignificant moments that, when strung together, offer a sobering explanation. But wait, those moments were orchestrated by other people, weren't they? Then it's not your fault, but life dealt you this crappy hand that you've, ahem, "played to the best of your ability."

Bullshit.

Refer back to lack of responsibility and, in turn, freedom.

It then serves to reason that the truly successful, and happy, people in this world were able to do something different. Read that again. Happy. They found their direction and followed it, unapologetic-ally. They controlled what happened to their lives and how they responded to the few things they could not. The idea certainly has merit.