Friday, June 12th, 2026

Control

I often fear what I cannot control.

I’ve lived with this fear my whole life. After some reflection, I have observed that most of my childhood fears growing up involved some sense that I’m not in control of a situation. Some particularly troubling fears included personal health problems, terminal illnesses slowly killing people I love, our family not having enough money to cover bills, or my family becoming homeless. I’m fortunate enough to have never experienced many of these fears, and I would like to think that I catastrophize less nowadays, though I don’t want to give myself too much credit.

Many people share this fear of not being in control. But why?

Why is it that our mental wellbeing is so dependent on factors that we ultimately have no control over? Why do we lose sleep over things that might or might not happen?

The obvious answer would be the loss of stability. When things are not in our control, we feel powerless and hopeless, especially if the situation is daunting. When circumstances change and our lives are affected by external forces, it feels like any grasp that we had on our

I have recently experienced a detriment in my life that, if you would guess, was out of my control. But now I have to live with it, and that is a part of life. That is a trial of life that you only get better at overcoming through experience.

I’m not going to pretend that I am an expert at adopting this mindset. But I’ll finish this with a quote from the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus,

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to stop worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will.”