The things we can control
How many times have we all heard it? “Focus on the things you can control.” It's the throughline of a thousand Stress Management seminars, along with self care and staying grounded.
And right here right now, I want to say screw that.
We've taken a well meant piece of advice intended for chronic worriers and turned it into a blanket excuse to be complete jerks. We've relegated all kinds of problems to the can’t control pile and then gone on our merry way ignoring them. It's just too easy to decide you can't control something and then stop paying any attention to it.
We do it with climate change. We do it with national politics. Now we do it with COVID. And the thing is, all of those things are actually stuff we can control. Well, not control, maybe - but certainly influence.
The problem is, finding the way to exert that influence requires serious thought. Exerting that influence generally requires difficult choices. It's a lot easier to decide you can't control something and quit thinking about it than it is to spend a long time examining a complicated topic and then make unpleasant personal choices in response.
(Kim Kardashian, billionaire, has an opinion on this.)
When we see friends or family or colleagues that we value and trust abandon all their COVID precautions, I suspect it's because they've decided COVID is beyond their control. They don't feel like they're being reckless, or like they're putting other people at risk. They believe they're making the responsible mental health choice by living their best lives and focusing on the things that they can control, instead of dwelling on those they cannot, like COVID.
When you look at it that way, Alanna in her N95 Mask insisting on outdoor dining is the freak here. She's disregarding all the mental health advice, and she's spreading fear. She's the oddball that proves everyone else is actually making the sane decision.
This is a depressing analysis and it leads us to an even more depressing question - when did we all decide we were powerless about everything?