Life Must Happen

The hardest thing about life for me is to just let life happen. That may sound strange, but I have the hardest time just letting things happen. By no means am I a control freak; I abhor the idea of micro management both of my life and other people, but I dislike leaving things up to chance. This problem I have isn't as bad as it used to be. Many people whom were close to me when I was younger can attest to this: whenever I saw someone about to do something stupid, or I feel something bad was about to happen,  I would go out of my way to prevent that person from hurting themselves or to prevent the inevitable from happening entirely. Most times those attempts ended in failure, and sometimes even exacerbated the problems I was trying to solve.  In the end I've learned the hard way that you can't prevent the inevitable and you cannot change what people will do unless they're honestly willing to listen to you. So I've learned to ease up a bit, but the problem still persists and I've been trying to get to the root of the problem. It stems from many places, mostly my insecurities and my up bringing, but it also comes from my experiences and how I've learned to cope with the world, as well as the fact that I have a really shitty monkey brain.

I am an American. An Asian American to be specific, a Filipino American to be even more specific, but nonetheless American. Thus I hold onto this crazy notion in my head that much of my reality, much of what happens to me and my world is dependent upon how I choose to interact with my world and the decisions that I make. Therefore what happens to me is completely in my hands. This over exaggerated sense of internal locus of control is pretty common in Americans, but usually only when something positive happens.  When something bad happens however, many Americans will chalk it up to forces outside of their control (external locus of control). I unfortunately don't have that ability to conveniently switch between the two when something happens to me and overcompensate on that internal locus of control business and attribute both my failures and successes to the things I've done. Everything seems to balance out in the end; if I do good I praise myself for it,  if I do bad I give myself some criticism, and since I tend to succeed more than fail (at least in recent years) I come up with a net positive. Well, you see the little descriptor before American at the top of this paragraph? Both the "Asian" and "Filipino" descriptors? They're there for a reason.

I was brought up in a Filipino household, and the culture that was passed on to me from my parents was far more collectivist than individualistic. I was taught that what I do shouldn't just be for myself; my actions should also benefit everyone around me. If I succeed, the success is not mine alone. Everyone around me contributed to that success, therefore my success should be shared, and everyone around me should be credited for it. Saying that it was my victory alone is selfish, and if there is anything that is discouraged in collectivist cultures, it's selfishness. As a result, I've come to avoid selfish behavior as much as I can, and do my best  to not be too selfish (I'm still American after all). So the formula now for how my brain sees my successes and failures goes something like this: success is a result of my personal action along with the support of the people around me, and failures are a direct result of my personal actions/in actions.  Things should be ok, I basically just share the glory with others around me, and I shoulder all the blame for not doing as well as I would like to. With the abundance of success this too should be ok, but I also have a shitty monkey brain, and good lord it's a shitty brain. 

You see, human brains, aka the shitty ancient monkey brain, have evolved to pay attention to negative stimuli more than positive stimuli. It's extremely useful back in the days when we were running away from animals trying to eat us, or so we could protect ourselves from raiding tribes of other super intelligent primates. Running from the tiger is way more important to your survival than feeling good because you found a new way to scratch that hard to reach itch on your back that you couldn't reach before. Unfortunately, that same system in shitty monkey brains is also the same system which calculates scarcity and it's really bad at it. Human brains are notoriously bad at numbers and keeping track of quantities. Combine inherently bad quantitative skills with the predisposition to focus on negative stimuli, add a sense of false scarcity because I have to share my victories, as well as the idea that the bad things that happen to me are basically my fault alone, and what you get is this fear of letting stuff slip out of control. 

It's extremely faulty logic, and my rational brain knows that. Most of the things that happen in the world are not within my control. I don't have any control over anyone else except me. I affect far less than .0001% of the world and in most people's lives I'm not even a significant factor. What happens to me is a good deal of luck and what other people around me are doing. If I get hit by a car, part of it would be my fault, but it's also the fault of someone else. If I get shot, there really isn't much I can do at all. If I win the lottery, I'm just extremely lucky. Even in my own life, a good deal of it I cannot control at all. So that inflated sense of control over my own destiny is flat out wrong and my rational brain knows it. Unfortunately, that rational, thinking brain is a recently developed trait humans have developed. The much older emotional monkey brain takes precedence over everything else. So that fear sticks with me, and my emotional brain searches for the only logical answer to addressing my fears: control as much of my life as possible.

This is probably why I like video games so much. If I work at it enough, I can beat any game out there. Video games are the only instance where you see a direct pay off for the time you've invested. It is also the only instance where you have complete control of how well your digital avatar, no matter what form it takes, and can determine their fate with 100% certainty. There are surprises the first time you play any game, but once you've completed it, you literally can predict what will happen, and you control your avatar's fate without any uncertainty at all. 

The real world however does not work like a video game at all. There are too many factors to consider, far too many uncertainties, variables completely unknown, at lest to me, and the game doesn't end until you're dead and you only get one chance to live. Life really isn't something you can control. Uncertainty will always be a part of life. Trying to do so usually ends in disaster. I've wrecked friendships and relationships because I tried so hard to control everything, and I watched countless more relationships crack under the strain of having too much restraining it. I've missed opportunities and  threw some away because I feared the uncertainty that would follow. It's like trying to dam up a river with endless amounts of flimsy levies, and those levies are made out of twigs. All levies fail eventually, and the disaster that follows is usually incomprehensible.  So it's probably best not to try to build levies with twigs and exert influence over aspects of our life that we realistically don't have much control over. Instead, I should let the river of life flow, and use it's flow to enhance my life and the lives  of those around me. I should control it selectively, and use it's force in my favor. Instead of building a dam, I should build a water mill with my twigs, and use the momentum of the river to power my efforts to creating a better world Diverting rivers is usually harmful, but harnessing it's energy is immensely helpful. In the end life must flow, and I just have to let it flow, because that's what life was meant to do. I just have to let life happen, and my life will be better for it.

(P.S. will add links to sources of information later)