Control vs. Choice

‘Control is an illusion; there is no control.’

It is likely that you have heard this. I too have heard it before, but understood its point later in life. Control is kind of an illusion. But, before arguing on that, we first need to understand what control means.

Defining 'Control'

There are many definitions. You can just Google it and then they will appear before you right away. Let me take you somewhere else for a change. One of my all-time favorite movies is ‘The Matrix Trilogy’. I often tell people to watch these three movies again and again. Most people, misunderstand this awesome movie as a mere action movie, but to me and many others out there, it is an amazingly thought provoking documentary.

In the 2nd movie of the trilogy, ‘The Matrix Reloaded’, remember, in Zion city at the night time, Neo meets one of the councilors and he asks Neo this very question that I raised; ‘What is control?’ and in my opinion, Neo’s reply said it all. He said that having control means if we can turn something on and off as we wish. And that, right there is my definition of control over something. We were born and it was not our choice; we will die, someday eventually; that’s what our lives are. Hence, if you think about ourselves like a biological machine, we don’t have the on and off switch in our hands. By that definition, we don’t really have control over our lives. Bummer, isn’t it? No, not really, because you have something else that no other animal have and that’s ‘choice’!

if you think about ourselves like a biological machine, we don’t have the on and off switch in our hands. By that definition, we don’t really have control over our lives. Bummer, isn’t it? No, not really, because you have something else that no other animal have and that’s ‘choice’!

How 'Choices' Works

Suppose, getting born was not by your choice. You didn’t choose your parents, your birthplace, your gender, etc. Now you grew up, slowly into an adult. Fast forwarding to a point when you are 14 years old, some of your friends started smoking cigarettes. They look cool (to you), even though they know that it’s not good for them and you feel a little left alone when you don’t smoke in the group. Here comes the moment of your choice.

• Choice 1: You choose to start smoking with them. You feel that you look cool too, you feel more attached to your friend circle. And you know that this might be the reason for you to die at least 10 years earlier, along with many other problems like lung cancer, heart diseases, erectile dysfunction etc.
•  Choice 2: You choose to not smoke, even if it makes you feel a little left out. As a result, you increase your possibility of living a healthier and longer life.

While reading this, the obvious choice by any rational person would be choice 2. Seems easy enough, right? Well, maybe not if you are a smoker already or want to be part of that group very badly. But no matter how hard a compromise it is, the end result is fairly visible and understandable by most.

That’s what a choice means. In this case, only one, small aspect of our lives, maybe of your life has been depicted. I like to call them branches of the life-tree. We always ride on one branch of course. If you choose to smoke, then you have chosen a path and you will go on down that road, period. As you go along, after some time, you might come across another choice of giving up smoking or continue. From there onwards, you go forward to a different job. But if you look at your life from outside, using your mind’s eye as a third person; you see that life is like a giant tree. All the branches in it are the possible choices that you had, have or might have in future. Some of those branches are major, very important, some are smaller, less important. But in the end you will get to experience only one major line. The others will only remain a mystery to you.

The 'Choice' Illustration

Let’s look into a simplified example. Say, your life started from A and by the time you reach B, you come across 4 choices for universities or higher education, each leading on to different path. If you choose to stay on path C, that path will be the only one you will know for sure. And you will only know it as you go along, bit by bit. The rest of the paths, leading to D, E and F, will only remain as obscured speculations. You will only be able to imagine and imagine, but those paths, may be filled with numerous possibilities or many troubles, will always be unclear and obscure to you. Only God will know those and that’s why He is the wisest!

When I was applying for my university, I had two options in my hand. Jahangirnagar University or BRAC University. For various reasons, I chose BRAC University. Remember this, that it was a choice, not enforced by any. During my tenure here, I studied Business Administration in BU, got in touch with some musicians, amazing lyricists and slowly went in the journey of becoming a music director and singer in media. I joined the cultural club of BU, where I met this wonderful person through singing and who knew that we would end up marrying each other!

Now, when I try to create an alternate version of this duration of my life in JU, well, it's quite fun imagining them actually. But, they will always remain as figments of my guess, imagination and never realized.

Now, when I try to create an alternate version of this duration of my life in JU, well, it's quite fun imagining them actually. But, they will always remain as figments of my guess, imagination and never realized. I always wondered what my life would have been if I went for JU, to study English. I might be in touch with some brilliant teachers. I would spend my time in a wonderful campus. I might meet a girl who is not of course my current wife. Highly likely that I might engage myself into some outstanding cultural activities, because JU provides that option. But, no matter how vivid my imagination goes, that major branch of my life remains unclear and it will always be so, because I chose the other branch.

Of course I had my reasons and visions for choosing; mainly because I wanted to stay in the main city of Dhaka, whereas JU is outside the city. I wanted to get in touch with some people who were in Dhaka city to pursue my music career and that happened. But, remember that those were only visions and dreams, used to justify my choice of university. Was I certain that my visions will come true at that point? No.

Reality of Making Choices and Vision of Life

And that brings us to an important point; visions and dreams, our paintings of our lives. We make choices and we do it with that painting of ours. We need that vision; that dream; we need to see them very clearly, feel it tangibly. Only afterwards, can we hope to choose the branches wisely. Remember though that not always it happens quickly, even sadder, sometime it doesn’t even happen. But that’s true for any painter’s painting. When an artist is painting something, he or she usually has something in mind, but as they go along, keep their brush strokes running some of those shapes change, many others, disappear. Same principle applies in life. We have seen our paintings in mind, now while trying to paint it, it of course changes. Relax, it might even be better that how you thought.

There is, however another aspect to envisioning paintings. Our paintings usually consist of our best selves, happiest possible dreams; but beware, reaching there is not likely to be a happy experience. Most people make a mistake in this phase. You dreamt of becoming a CEO within 10 years of your career. But as you go along, you realize that it’s too tough; the compromises you are having to make is getting difficult. The politics is too heavy on you, etc. The problem is, becoming a CEO seems such a fancy picture, it’s so good to imagine yourself there, but that’s only the end. It’s not the path. The path is always or nearly always hurtful, painful and difficult. Many out there get frustrated and decide to quit in this stage. In my experience and opinion, either they don’t have a painting of themselves or they have a weak one; something they didn’t feel very strongly. In my days of counselling, I always ask them to redraw their paintings or draw a new one from the beginning.

What is the point of such a concept though? Simply, to reduce stress, to calm you, to help you find happiness and peace in life. There are times when our lives go out of control. Though, everything might actually seem that way, remember this, you are never out of choices! You have control over how you react to the situation, people, you own emotions etc. I think, a popular slang reflects this better than anything, ‘shit happens!’ It happens to all of us, but when it does, we can choose to pull ourselves together or be wrecked by it. It’s not easy of course, but if you keep in mind the long term vision before you and remember that success or failure is not just about today, rather it’s a journey; you will find the motivation take the hardship to build the next day.

I also came across a few common confusions while explaining this concept to people. Does that mean that whenever we ask someone to control the situation, take control of your lives means nothing? Is it meaningless?

Not at all! I don’t have an antipathy towards the word ‘control’. It’s just a concept to open your mind so that you may see things differently. In a smaller scope, we definitely control the outcome. Say, your boss gave you to complete a project and you have a budget to complete the task. Now, of course you will control the finance; I will use the same word as everyone else. When I am heading a project of my office, I am in control of decision making. But, try to understand that it’s only a project of your life we are talking about. When you look at your life as a whole, you will see that you planned about your life in so many ways. But, did you always reach to everything that you wanted? Most likely, no.

The reason of presenting this old concept before you once again is to only remind you to not get stressed due to short term failures. They happen, to all the people who you believe to be successful. But in most cases, those successful people know that they are just in a journey and success is not a destination. And they continue down that road till their last capable breath.

...those successful people know that they are just in a journey and success is not a destination.

Do remember that in reality, you only have some control over your own short term actions and decisions in certain situations, within certain parameters, within a given tenure. I changed my job with the hope of a better salary, a better career, a better environment. Within 3 – 4 months of my tenure there, I realized that things were terribly heading south. I was not going along with my boss, the job scope was not as great as I hoped it would be, etc. I tried to figure out, if it is just me and I soon realized that the entire team is suffering equally or worse. No matter how hard I decided to fix things, grab control of the situation, I couldn’t. Frightened and frustrated me, almost decided to quit. However, suddenly my boss got changed and the new person became the best role model of our entire team. And we started performing tremendously well. The environment became very soulful, our work became top notch and we completed more projects within the next 6 months than we have done in the last 1.5 years.

Needless to say, it was a terrible time. I and the total team was stressed tremendously. And all of us failed to grab control of the situation. The harder we tried, the more stressed we became. In the job life, you don’t get to choose your boss, so many of us chose to leave the organization. I was almost down that road and suddenly this new boss changed my entire concept of people management and became one of our dearest role models.

Most of you who are pursuing a career might have similar experiences like mine. There are bosses and line managers you hate, jobs you hate to go to. And there is very little you can truly do about them. Now, you can choose to leave or you can choose to stay and fight to establish a good name before you switch to another job. I have come across another fellow, who is an old colleague as well, shared his experience in another job where he was insulted in front of everyone for a poor performance. He took it as a challenge and within the next 8 months gave the organization such a performance that the same person who insulted him, gave him a huge complement publicly and subsequently offered him a promotion. Well, guess what, he gave his resignation right then and there! I don’t know why that happened though.

In both situations, you really don’t have much control over the situation. We always hope and expect that the situation will be great. We believe that all the parameters of the coming days, like bank balance, relationships, accommodation, professional lives etc. will be at their bests. But, what if the situation changes? What if your assumption of parameters goes wrong or incorrect? Would you sit idle and get upset? Well, some people do so, and there are some others who will change their plans, actions or their very selves accordingly. My only request is, don’t sit idle. You don’t have control of all situations all the time, but you always have a choice. We feel terrified when we realize that the situation is out of control. I am only repeating that you don’t have to live in fear because of your situation, because you probably never had control, but choices are up there for you to grab.

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Scooped from the book 'Painting Life With Purpose' by Miftah Zaman.

Purchase 'Painting Life With Purpose' online from Satirtho Prokashona and Rokomari.com.

About the Author

Miftah Zaman is a Bangladeshi born HR & training, entrepreneur, consultant, musician and singer. Over a long career in HR, he specialized in training and development and worked in various national and international corporate organizations and NGOs. Later, he founded his own organization, ReLearn, a consulting organization focusing in skill assessment, training and development. Also, he performs regularly as a professional singer and music director across Bangladesh and overseas.