What We Can Do

"If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do."
Samuel Butler

Most of us get into trouble because we don't realize exactly what we can do. Some of us think that we should be able to do anything and so we claim responsibility for things that we have no control over. We get frustrated and angry when those things happen that we didn't plan on, and we blame them for not cooperating with us. We feel like victims. We feel depressed because we can't control all those things. We begin to feel like things happen just to spite us. It rains on our parade.

Some of us think that we can't do anything and so we claim responsibility for nothing. Nothing is our fault. Whatever happens to us has nothing to do with anything we might have done or not done. But this also leads to a feeling of lack of control. If what happens to us has nothing to do with anything we do, then we have no way of influencing what happens to us. And when we feel like we have no control, depression is the inevitable result. Once again we feel like victims.

It is those people who realize that there are some, but not all, things that they can control by their own actions that gain a sense of control and therefore joy. They are then motivated to focus on the things that they know they have control over and exersise the control over those things that they really have. And like a muscle, the more their power of control is used, the stronger it gets. The more they practise it, the more control they gain over things that they previously had no control over. And soon there is a surprisingly small number of things that they can't control.