What Can Be Controlled?

    The leaves are becoming brown and crispy underfoot, and the wind is blowing a bit more strongly than in the previous week. I briefly consider whether yesterday's rain is the aftermath of a hurricane that ripped through Mexico a couple of days ago. When I get to the subway station to head to the gym,  I see a whole lot of people in the subway cars, waiting eagerly (if not resignedly) for the train to close its doors. Apparently, "we are experiencing a delay northbound at Lawrence Station". I wait for the subway train to finally start up after the delay...only to experience another delay at York Mills Station not ten minutes later.
    On the way to the gym, I still had an anxiety about a set of proposals I intended to work on for possible school projects in the future. And a reflection came to me: is there anything that I really control in these situations?  And at that point, I started to reflect that it's a bit like someone who plants seeds. If a person plants a seed and sits there waiting for the plant to bloom, chances are she will have wasted a lot of time that could have been spent planting other seeds. This isn't to say that it's not important to focus on one thing. It seems quite important, but even one commitment is actually composed of many smaller steps. To treat these steps as a whole without considering their parts would not only be overwhelming, but it would also be discouraging. It would be like trying to bank all my hopes on the full grown tree, rather than seeing its growth as the sum of different stages and movements. And it would also be privileging result over an unfolding process.
     I can plant seeds and do all the best things to foster a tree's growth, but is that any guarantee that the tree will grow from it? I would like to think that were so, but unfortunately not. Many factors beyond my control determine whether the tree grows or not, including the inside of the acorn or seed itself. I can influence and add whatever love or care I can to foster its growth, but it's the tree that has to grow, and not me. And even as I write that point, I am aware that the tree is just an abstraction: it too is comprised of many interlocking conditions.
    How does reflecting on conditions help? I think it is about knowing that I can only plant seeds, and it is not a failure on my part if none of them grow! It is only an invitation to gently explore what might increase the chances of growth, without attaching its failure to a personal failure. In this way, I stop linking the phenomena to this sense of self and will.