"Now listen, you who say,'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, car and make money on business.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes." (James 4:13-14)

I was reflecting on these New Testament verses last night, how deep and almost nihilistic they seem (though James does go on to urge us to put our full trust in God) and also somewhat stoic in tone. Epictetus would have probably agreed and then added,

“Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions."

Together, these two positions mock at the contemporary vogue (though it is ageless) for having control of one's life, of being the captain of one's destiny. The thrust of modern education, of business school ideology, of media commentary, is that you do have control of your personal circumstances, even if the world around seems impervious to those efforts to manipulate. Thus an illusion of control is established, where we are led to believe that our reach is far beyond what it really is. You can see the consequences for this kind of thinking - anxiety, frustration, anger and depression - over not being able to rule over the opinions and behaviour of others, nor of coming to terms with chance events, the laws of nature and just plain bad luck.

So we ask 'why did this happen to me?' when the furniture of lives is abruptly upended. It can happen to anyone at anytime, as James reminds us. How we respond to calamity is strangely within our power, however. Our thinking is the key; all else follows, for better or worse.