When Life Happens: The Heart and 'Control'

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Life doesn't ask. It just arrives.

(Image created by Chat GPT)

I've written before about how we don't really have control over 'anything' and how life unfolds according to the universe like a script we don't get to edit. 

But if there's one thing I do believe we do have control over, it's our reactions to what happens to us. 

We are all human at the end of the day. Emotions get the best of us at times. Sometimes we say things we don't mean, hurt others unintentionally, or act in ways we later regret. But still, I feel that our reaction is the one thing that sits within our grasp.

When the world feels like it has spun out of our 'control', how do we choose to react?

Do we panic? blame? let go?

Personally, I'm still learning how to manage my own reactions. It's not easy. But I've come to realize; if I don't, the only person who truly suffers is me, not anyone else. 

It's me who loses sleep. 

It's me who lies awake, replaying conversations, wishing I'd handled things differently. Wondering if I could have spoken with more kindness, acted with more maturity or even put myself in a position where I could have avoided certain things. 

The emotional residue of our reaction sticks to us and not necessarily the people we direct them at. 

You can't control whether or not you get hurt. Life just happens. People say things, sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident. But what happens then? The only thing you can control is your reaction. 

Do you forgive? Do you forget? Do you hold on? Do you let go?

Essentially do you protect your peace, or succumb to the chaos? 

The choices we make in those moments, shape not only our relationships but our internal state. At the end of the day, if you know you've reacted in the best way you could possibly have, then whatever the outcome is the universe's will. So let go and just be. 

All this sounds poetic, I know. Theoretically it may seem so easy to say, but to practice it, is far from it. 

We all slip, we all overreact, we all carry our "foolish hearts" into places they shouldn't go. But I guess we all learn as we go through this ride we call life.

No one will truly understand what you feel in this world because your experience is unique to only you. People can only empathize, maybe provide comfort, but they don't live your life. 

Before ending this post, I would like to share this bhajan/song that I randomly came across one day. 

It's called "My Foolish Heart / Bhaja Govinda" by Krishna Das. The lyrics go like this:


My foolish heart
Why do you weep?
You throw yourself away again
Now you cry yourself to sleep.
Cry yourself to sleep…

My foolish heart
When will you learn?
You are the eyes of the world
And there’s nowhere else to turn.
Nowhere else to turn…

Bhaja Govindam, bhaja Govindam
My foolish heart.
Govindam Govindam Govindam
My foolish heart
My foolish heart
My foolish heart…

Raadhe Raadhe Govinda Govinda
Raadhe Raadhe Govinda Govinda
Govinda Bhaja Govinda
Govinda Bhaja Govinda


The singer explains his inspiration behind the bhajan/song from a hymn from Adi Shankaracharya called "Bhaja Govindam". You can read more about it here in his page and you can listen to the full track here. 

This particular bhajan appealed to me because it made me think of how the heart always looks outward for comfort and a sense of fulfillment when in truth, there's nowhere and no one to turn to except inwards and to the universe. And that's why the heart is called foolish, because it forgets this over and over again. It keeps falling in the same illusion that the outside world will give it peace, over and over again until finally one day, it learns. 

May we all learn, soon. 

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