You Are Not in Control of Your Life

You are the flame of a candle in the wind. You do not choose the direction the wind blows, and you were never meant to. You are not in control of your life. You are life itself.

Picture a candle flame in a room where the door has been left open. When the air is still, the flame stands straight and quiet. When a breeze passes, small tremors run through it, so small you miss them unless you are watching closely. When the wind rises, the flame bends and wavers in directions no one could have predicted. And there is always the chance of a gust strong enough to put it out. That flame is your life, and you have never once controlled the wind.

You know the frustration of the wind blowing the wrong way. The plan that fell through, the illness that arrived in the worst week, the person who did not do what you expected. In those moments you feel powerless, and you are. Then there are other stretches when everything goes exactly as you decided, and you feel the whole of life is in your hands. Here is the strange part: those two experiences are the same experience seen from two sides. Control and the lack of it are both stories about a wind you never held.

The thing in you that wants control has a name, and the name is I. That I has cut the cord that tied it to life and now stands apart, expecting life to obey. When life does not, the I suffers, and suffers deeply, because it cannot accept that life holds countless forces it will never reach. What the I forgets is that even in the most violent storm, the light that made the I is still shining. The flame may bend to the floor. The light does not go anywhere.

Now look at what the flame itself does. It does not expect the wind to come from any particular side. When the wind blows, it does not ask why, or where the wind came from, or where it will turn next. It bends, fully and without resistance, in the direction it is supposed to bend. And in the bending, not in standing straight, it shows what it is made of. A flame that fought the wind would only go out sooner.

This is not resignation, and it is not weakness. The flame is not giving up. It is doing the one thing a flame can do, which is to burn, in whatever shape the moment allows. Giving up the need for control is not giving up your life. It is giving up the one part of you that was never alive to begin with: the idea that you stood outside your life, directing it. When that idea loosens, what remains is not helplessness. It is the light itself, steady in the middle of the weather.

I wrote the sentence at the top of this essay for myself first. I am not in control of my life, but I am life itself. Say it once in a hard week and notice what happens in the body. Something unclenches. The wind is still blowing. But you are no longer the one who was supposed to stop it.

Questions that arise

If I am not in control, why bother doing anything?

The flame still burns; you still act, plan and care. What ends is the belief that outcomes are yours to command. You do what is in front of you, and you stop suffering over the wind.

Isn't accepting the wind just giving up?

No. Giving up is a flame that stops burning. Acceptance is a flame that bends and keeps burning. It takes more life, not less, to meet what comes without resisting it.

Why does the lack of control hurt so much?

Because the sense of I has set itself apart from life and expects life to obey. When it does not, that I feels threatened. The hurt is the I defending a position it never actually held.

What is the light that never goes out?

The awareness in which all of this is happening, including the I and its frustration. It is what you are underneath the story of control, and it does not bend or flicker.

Where this came from

This is one of fifty short pieces in my book Seeker of Silences. Every one of them begins with the word On, and every one opens with a single line. This one is On Giving Up the Need for Control, and its line is the sentence at the top of this essay: I am not in control of my life, but I am life itself. The whole book is written that way, one page at a time, meant to be read slowly, one a morning.

Seeker of Silences runs about 110 pages and costs €9. The rest of my books are at jussiniittyviita.com.