No matter how much study I put into how to react to unforeseen circumstances, I still manage to let myself down. I have spent a lot of time working on CBT techniques and more recently explored Stoic philosophical positions, particularly those attributed to Epictetus. There are certain things that are within my control (thoughts, feelings, choices, aversions, desires etc) but there are many things that are almost entirely outside of my control, such a injury, death, loss of friends and family, poverty, natural disasters etc. I do have a little control in some of the latter category, but it is constrained by circumstances and the actions of others.

So yesterday Ann and I went to her TAFE College to finally get her a student ID card. This was her first available day and she has already attended half a dozen Saturday morning classes. I had been with her when she had originally enrolled and received her course information and I had double-checked all documents for accuracy. So I was very surprised to learn that somehow Ann was not enrolled nor on any of their computer systems. She didn't exist. Thirty minutes of cross-checking revealed nothing more - zilch! I grew increasingly irritated at what I thought gross incompetence though fortunately I kept my remarks to a bare minimum and then largely neutral. And these feelings stayed with me for hours afterwards.

So there you have it. A situation over which I had no control but behaving in manner as if I did. With that behaviour came all sorts of negative feelings and thoughts, all needlessly evoked and sustained. I have so far to go still and even then, can easily slip back into old ways of acting. I need more post-it notes, some stuck to my forehead, others to places where I can recall, at a moment's notice, how little is my power in the scheme of things.

“See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.”

Eckhart Tolle

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond our power or our will. ”

Epictetus

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

Jesus