A friend of mine on Facebook just asked that question.  Someone he knew with two kids and a wife just passed away at the young age of 37.  Those of you that know me know I lost my wife who was 40 and I’m now raising two very young kids.  So this question of control is something that I have thought about for the past three years.  I’ve changed my position on it a couple of times but today I’m going to write down and share what I think and then hopefully I can revisit it in the future and see where I differ on it.

Do we have direct control of our lives?  No.  Can we influence our life and set its direction?  Yes.  I’m going to simplify this down to illustrate my point.  First I need to breakdown “life” into its major components.  Life can be considered as an individual’s Health, Family, Friends and Career.  Yes, I’m sure you can break that down or separate it further but I need to keep it simple so I can write about it.

Let’s focus just on Health for the moment.  If you stay and agree with me on this then you can see how it would apply to the others.  Your “health” is not predetermined.  Picture health as a road and there are various roads that make of the quality of health.  Once again for simplicity let’s assume health can be broken down into the three roads of Poor Health, Average Health and Great Health.  You can influence which road you are on by choosing to eat well or work out.  People with certain disabilities may argue that but even in those instances there are different things you can do to raise or lower the quality of health.  You may not be able to change the road you are on but you move yourself up or down on that road.

In general you can influence what road you are on and where on the road you lie.  You have to actively choose to do this.  Yes some people will die sooner than others but even those who die young controlled how they lived.  Passing away at a younger age is an event, it doesn’t make your whole life good or bad.