It is interesting to consider how much of our lives we control. We are privileged (the fact that you are on the internet implies you fit within this ‘we’) to control a lot of things some people can’t. We can, for the most part, control what and when we eat or drink, where we go, what we do and to a certain degree who we are. We can, indirectly, control who runs the country, who represents us in Europe and, of course, who will win Eurovision. However, we are brilliant at ignoring all these privileged areas of control and focusing on what we cannot control.
We can’t really control what we look like, how we feel or others around us and yet that is often what we worry most about doing. There are multi-million pound industries dedicated to areas of our lives outside of our control. People will pay through the roof to tell someone their problems in a bid to control how they feel about their life. I wouldn’t have the audacity to suggest this doesn’t help people but it is interesting how desperate we are to change the unchangeable.
It is probably worth qualifying the word unchangeable with the caveat of ‘mostly’ unchangeable. You can change the way you look with serious commitment (or surgery!) and you can change the way you feel with extensive therapy. The question is; is it worth the effort?
Now obviously with the examples I’ve given above you could easily talk about people losing weight to benefit their health or indeed someone who is clinically depressed seeking treatment. However, when one considers the person who has surgery to deal with an imperfection of their appearance (as an example of an arguably non essential change) one has to ask oneself if that change is really necessary.
For the most part, the conclusion is yes. Obviously if someone can improve their quality of life then they should do so. It is just worth considering whether the improvement is due to the change made or merely the fact that the person changed something ‘unchangeable’. It is important to remember how much we do control before getting too hung up on what we can’t.