Powerlessness

I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, but let’s say you text or call someone and they don’t call you back. You immediately think that they hate you. Now, there are a million reasons why someone might not return a text or call. Maybe they missed it. Maybe they are busy. Maybe they didn’t think that a response was expected. But you stew on it. You obsess over it for days and weeks, preoccupied with the idea that someone out there, somewhere, doesn’t like you. It’s the last thing you think about before you fall asleep, and the first thing you think about when you wake up. You try to will that person to call you with the power of your mind, through some kind of force field that you send through the atmosphere.

News flash: you are not in charge of what other people think of you.

You’re not! When someone told me this, back in 2006, that I am not in charge of what other people think of me, it was like I had been struck by lightning. I am not in charge of what other people think of me? I thought I was. I thought a lot of things back then. I thought I could make the stock market do what I wanted it to do. I really did. I thought I could will the stock market higher or lower. I thought I had control over it. I thought I had control over a lot of things.

I didn’t, and we don’t, and there is a word for this: powerlessness.

If you really think about it, we are not in control of much of anything. As I drive to work in the morning, I am not in control of traffic. I could be sitting there in my car like a chump, and there is not much I can do about it. I am also not in control of whether or not I get rear-ended. Some drunk could be looking at Instagram models on his phone while he’s driving, and it is going to ruin my day. I am not in control of whether people unsubscribe to my newsletter. I am not really in control of my investment performance. I think I am, but I am not. I am not in control of politics. I am not in charge of who becomes president. I am not in control of my taxes; that gets decided for me. I am not in control of the economy. I am not in control of interest rates. I am not in control of whether I get fired from one of my writing gigs, like what happened last year. I am not in control of whether people dance to my music. I am not in control of the health of my cats. They will eventually get sick and die, and there is not much I can do about it. I am not in control of whether my new house gets built on time. I am not in control of how much it is going to cost. I am not in control over my own health. I am not in control of my wife’s health, or any of my family members.

As it turns out, I am in control of very little. Now, you may look at this list, and think you have control over some of these things. Like your investment performance. Do you, really? Of course not. Some of the smartest people in the world get shithoused in the markets every year. Other people get lucky over and over again. It is mostly random. And this is where people get into trouble, because they think that investment performance is a function of work and effort. You can work 22 hours a day, and it makes no difference. You can work 2 hours a day, and it makes no difference. Change my mind.

I am not in control of people and things. I am only in control of how I respond to people and things. I am in control of my attitude. I am in control of my feelings. That is the essence of being human: we can choose our response to things. Many years ago, I was listening to a public speaker tell the story about the death of his wife—two teenagers dropped a cinder block off an overpass and it landed on her windshield, instantly killing her. They never found the kids. I suppose he could have loaded his shotgun and went out in search of the perpetrators. That is not the response that he chose. He handled it with grace, even forgiving the killers for their actions. It was one of the most powerful messages I have ever heard.

Keep in mind that I don’t believe in determinism of any kind. I never believed any of that Martin Armstrong bullshit. And I don’t believe any of the Fourth Turning bullshit, either, though I do like reading about generational studies. I don’t believe that tragedies are “God’s will.” But since we’re on the subject, I do believe that God won’t give us anything that we can’t handle—no matter how horrible the circumstances. And when I am faced with a serious challenge, I often think to myself, “What am I supposed to learn from this?” There is a lesson in everything. I am also not a believer in the idea that everything happens for a reason, but I do believe that life’s obstacles are opportunities to respond to adverse circumstances with poise.

Someday, something awful, something entirely out of my control is going to happen to me. It is a statistical certainty. How I respond to it will be up to me.

Several months ago, I wrote about death with dignity. How will you choose to respond to the news that you are in checkmate, that you have a limited amount of time on planet Earth? Will you handle it gracefully, fearlessly, or will you panic and drag everyone down with you? How will you handle the death of a parent, or child? That’s not to say that you shouldn’t mourn in these situations—there is a time and a place for mourning. And there is a time and a place for asking for help. But your burden shouldn’t become someone else’s. And it’s funny, because some of our favorite stories as a society are those of people responding with grace and fortitude in times of extreme hardship. Like Viktor Frankl, and John McCain. We read these stories over and over again, and pass the book recommendations around on Twitter. Dignity is a very underused word these days.

One great litmus test of spiritual fitness is how you respond when you are in a car accident. Do you fly out of the vehicle, flapping your arms like a signalman, screaming obscenities at the other driver? Or do you calmly approach the other vehicle and ask the driver if he or she is okay—even if the accident was their fault? How you respond in these situations says a lot about you. Accidents suck bad enough as it is, it is a massive inconvenience, because now you have to deal with insurance and police and getting your car fixed, and nobody has time for that, and you don’t need to exacerbate the situation by acting like an asshole. I sideswiped a guy on Highway 17 Bypass in Myrtle Beach in 2021, the first collision with another vehicle that I had ever caused, and when we pulled over, he held up his hands in the what the fuck? gesture, and I just shrugged and said, I’m sorry, and then he was totally cool. Nobody’s hurt. It’s a hassle, but it’s not the end of the world. I don’t remember his name, and I will never see him again, but I will never forget the decency he showed me that day.

Another test of spiritual fitness is when you are fired from your job. When you’ve been fired, you’re typically thinking about yourself, but I encourage you to think about the feelings of the poor person who has to deliver the news. Firing people isn’t easy for anyone involved, and the last thing you need to do is to scream and yell and make a hard situation more difficult. The best thing to do in these situations is to be classy: thank them for all the opportunities and wish them the best in the future. And guess what: if you exit gracefully, you will leave on good terms and with good feelings, and you never know: you might be needed at some point in the future. People lose sight of this in the moment. Remember, you can choose your response to things. Another recommendation: pause before you speak or act.

Now, the thing about powerlessness is that there is a certain class of people—politicians, CEOs, financiers, people in positions of authority—that really believe that they can direct the activities of everyone that works for them. Guess what: things would work just fine if you’re not there. And that’s the spiritually beautiful aspect of libertarianism: spontaneous order and the unplanned. When you examine communism, really what it is, is a spiritual sickness, that one person can control the activities of an entire population and its economy, and can optimally direct the actions of millions of people. And with loss of control comes fear, and with fear comes violence. The Western world, with its capitalism and liberal democracies, is spiritually enlightened, though we seem to be regressing on that front.

With powerlessness comes courage. To be in possession of the idea that nothing is within your control, but whatever happens, everything will be ok. And it always is.