TS: in control of your life vs. your life in control of you

I've been wondering about this as the past year+ I've had to go through a great deal of major life-changes, yet few to none of them have been of my own design, and lately, after fulfilling all my solid obligations/responsibilities, I only end up with maybe 8 - 10 hours a week wherein I have some deciding power in regards to "what I'm doing". This is making it hard to maintain friendships, to feel like I'm accomplishing anything musically/artistically, and mostly it makes me feel disconnected from my own existence in a way that I don't quite enjoy or feel inspired by.

Not to be completely reducing your life to one facet, but how much of that is the down side to being a single dad?

I have theoretically complete power over 40+ hours of my life a week. That doesn't make me any happier with the unsatisfying mess that is my life, but it does mean that I don't have much grounds to whine at you. Even this meta-whining :(

Actually I don't see my son but like 2 days a week now, it has very very little to do with that.

I'm really not trying to whine though so much as question the concept that our life is guided primarily by our choices, I was just trying to use my own life-example as a set-up for discussion of the possibility that the options we are presented with in life bear more significance over what happens to us than which ones we choose.

Even if you did have the 'choice' to do what you wanted with more of your time, how much of that is really your own "free will" and how much is your basic habits and learned behavior from years past?

Everything happens for a reason. You can either recognize that everything about your life except the weather is a choice you've made for yourself (at some point) or you can toss up a lot of shit to fate, which is what I've been doing for a while (and I don't think is necessarily very healthy, but it helps keep my stress from reaching unbelievable levels at the moment).

The fact that you are asking this question of yourself at this point in time is pretty indicative that you're ready to change something about your life, so I suggest you go and do that. It's relatively easy to do once you pick a course of action and decide to follow through. Of course, those are the tricky parts.

(move to Chicago)

No no, I'm not saying you're whining at all. Having no free time because you honour your commitments, then you have a dilemma, and talking about it is cool. If you have no free time because you waste it all on stupid stuff that you know is stupid (I AM Futurama's Fry) then, that's whining.

I don't honestly believe in fate and chance but I try to force myself to.

TOMBOT = soooo right on.

(ironically I wrote a song last night with a chorus that goes "all it takes to change is to really want it")

Really I just have more responsibilities right now than I'd like, and not really things that have anything to do with my own personal goals, and I guess they are the effects of decisions I've made in that I choose not to say 'no' to family, friends, etc.

Obviously you don't choose options you aren't presented with, I'd put it more as "How much of your life is entirely out of control", like how many choices were you never presented with for reasons having nothing to do with choices you've made.

An electron went ping instead of pong, a cell did something it had'nt before, and seven years later my father died.

And then I'd argue about the wording for another two hours and go home for four hours sleep like the inarticulate lump I am.

See, I kinda do believe in fate/chance, but that's a semi-belief that's really being put to the test right now.

One thing I was thinking though, in a broader getting-away-from-the-personal sense, is that, even when we do make choices, how often are we forced to choose between options based on how less-lame they are than the other ("lesser of two evils" cliche I guess)? I mean, how much are we in control of our options?

Aw crap! Gotta go pick up my mom haha!

(xpost arguing-about-the-wording = ILX, minus the pervalism)

I have so much I would like to suddenly bust out with but there's no way in fuck I'm saying any of it on this message board. The general gist of what I typed, realized I was saying, deleted and then sat around being annoyed about for five minutes: I think the problem is that the choices you make end up as a chain reaction to the point where, eventually, based on the choices you might've made years ago, you seem to be presented with choices that are for shit. But the reality is those choices were influenced by past choices blah blah blah...and of course you can still choose fucking horrible choices for yourself continually compounding the problem. It gets to the point where your life is not under your control, seemingly, but in reality it always was. Like Dorothy and going home, I guess? The problem is digging yourself out of the hole and I haven't figured that one out yet but nick, when I do, I'll email you the instructions.

Basically I think the answer is to say fuck it, bag it up, and run completely away but that's never actually worked out for me necessarily.

We don't live in isolation - social/group processes have evolved, and we are bound by these, for better and for worse. I think it is possible to make fundamental changes in your life, but it takes fortitude and determination - and maybe thses times of change are when people feel most in control of their lives - control = direction/destination in life?

Life will take you along for the ride if you let it, and it's possible to be happy when doing this - just chugging along, picking up the pay cheques, having some good times, having some bad.

If you've got the urge to take control, then yeah, you've got to give it a shot and accept that life may not be so sweet for a while, but has the potential to be better.

I think, there is more uncertainty when trying to take control of one's life.

What I'm trying to say is, that I think life is a mixture of being driven by internal forces, which are sometimes in harmony/ conflict with social pressures/tradition/responsibility etc.

Okay, this is totally shambolic, sorry.

I'm in control of my life in that I believe in free will. I pretty much do what I want; I just don't seem to want that much. I'm not sure when I stopped wanting much. Not that I have it bad at all--I just kind of thought I would do something Special, and now it doesn't look so much like it. But there are different kinds of special, and ten/eight/five years ago I'd have been surprised to be alive now.

When I was 23, an awesome 38-year-old woman told me that getting older was better because there wasn't nearly as much existential angst. There's probably less "edge" too. But I think I'm getting a little of that now.

As Tom said upthread, the toughest part is deciding exactly what to do with your life. (I'd think having so much free will spoils us, not that living in a "police state" environment would help, either!) Knowing that you have something important that needs doing brings focus, but the trick is in finding balance with the fun stuff. American culture tends to tell you: "You aren't important unless you are working 35-40 hours a week, making the bucks." Adulthood teaches that this persepective is pure crap.

(This made sense in my head, hopefully, it isn't rambling too badly)

Er, as u all can already guess, my experiences w/ and education of star-gazing has altered my views on this a bit, to the point where I now believe that most of what we experience isn't consciously up to "free will," but an inner (and outer) karmic timetable is constantly guiding our thoughts and actions, to the point where when certain karmas are "ripe" they burst forth first from the causal body (soul), and then into the astral body (the mind), which directly influences the direction of the body. So even all the decisions you think that you're making on account of some "free" agency or independent will (independent to what?...matter is ultimately reduced to only thought after all, and we are only our thoughts, past and present, at the end of everything), are actually arising within you at the moment they are karmically timed to...and this includes gigantic decisions such as where to move when (which would enable you to pay off the rest of your rnanubandhana or karmic debts in the most expeditious manner), to the ones you think are minute, such as crossing the street. Which, of course, can become gigantic in context -> deciding to cross the street at the "wrong" (but karmically right) time leads to that fatal accident... which is then attributed to "fate"

The irony/paradox is that despite all this, we have to maintain the so-called "illusion" of free will, for if we were to be aware of all the repercussions each thought, action and decision has in the immediate and distant future, we would "psychologically paralyze" ourselves, in the words of one yogi, and become fearfully inactive, or inert. We wouldn't be able to function unless we believed in the power of our own volitions! Al of this is in some ultimate or non-relative sense, however; relatively speaking, there are different sorts of karmas down here: dridha karmas are fixed, meaning unescapable and so-called-destined to happen, whereas adridha are changeable ones: it's a matter of probability, and you can influence or alter these. This is pretty much what most of us can observe anyway: some things in life are fixed, and unalterable - there's no avoiding them, they [will] happen no matter what you do. The fatal accident, that parental abuse, nature's assult, etc. Some things aren't (and you can tell the differences by examining the horoscope, but you knew I was going to say that), and you can of course continue to influence and improve your own "fate" by the strength of positive thinking, etc - but never to the extent that western New Agers would have you believe, who want to do away with any philosophy that excludes free will altogether, but still insist that they believe in "karma" !

And speaking of contradictions, i always think it's funny that when people are "successful" or things are going their way, they own up to their actions and claim that it was only through their hard work and rigorous efforts and good judgment and so forth that they achieved what they did, but if things aren't going their way, or problems occur, then they attribute all that to "bad luck" and blame fate for their misfortunes...in truth everything that happens is/was your own fault/reward, as its karmic...but most forget that former lifetimes come into play when the fruit of the action is delivered, or don't believe in all that "hippy shit" to start with :P

it's all the same thing.
I feel better when I think
'yeah I'm in control,'

and when I wallow
in self-pity it seems like
life's pimp-slapping me

free will versus fate,
neither one really exists,
we invented them

word

oops OTM

"The only way to hold on is to let go"

I love fortune cookies...but there's something in it. If you try to control everything, then your worries grow exponentially. Each worry has another 10 worries behind it - you can almost visualise a tree diagram of options or further worrying.

Fate may just be an empty concept - 'whatever is going to happen will happen'. Well, that seems quite empty to me. 'The future is predetermined' also seems empty, as all it says is that the past determines the future. That is not exactly controversial - what else is going to determine the future?

One of the more, er, interesting realisations I had years ago was that, having clearly perceived that there was no internal volitional agent bringing about my actions, the actions happened anyway. Concepts like self-control, responsibility, moral imperative etc have more or less vanished from my life and from my speech. Have I become a vicious monster? No, I'm much the same, it seems. It's not like I lost something I once had, after all.

People who believe in free will get extremely annoyed at the suggestion there isn't any such thing as personal choice, and consequently it may be best to avoid the subject, in case it inflames tempers. However I find myself revelling in the company of people who don't seem to have some personal agenda to fulfill, and these types are typically very peaceable yet rather surprising too - they always seem to change with circumstances, adapting freely and responsively to change. I could be wrong about all this of course.