‘It’s not up to you, but it’s also NOT not up to you.’

I can’t remember where I heard this or who said it, but it’s such a great description of the human predicament and daily struggle.

In case you don’t get it straight away, let me try another way of describing this:

‘Everything just happens by itself all the time, including the idea and the sense that we’re doing it.’

So it’s not up to you because it’s always life doing stuff (and even doing you).

And it IS up to you because it can definitely feel that way.

It’s one of those contradictions that work really well.

We truly need them to make this gig flourish.

Without the sense of ownership and control, many interesting things like accomplishment and failure, pride and guilt, wouldn’t exist.

I’m not judging any experience in particular, I’m just saying that the richness of being a human comes from all the different things we can believe in.

Many experiences, many typically human traits, absolutely need the idea that there’s a human YOU who’s doing stuff and controlling stuff and fucking stuff up.

It’s a brilliant and essential element for the credibility of the show.

And it obviously does a tremendous job.

If you stop and take a look at the overwhelming amount of stuff we have NOTHING to say about (from birth and physical functions and processes, to weather and sunrise and other people’s behavior and cats shitting on the couch), it’s clear that our involvement amounts to nearly nothing.

But the mind doesn’t approve.

No sir!

It wants to have a strong sense of control, of opportunity, of choosing, and therefore uses its dominance over our attention to constantly build an image of power.

This is actually where the mind lends its importance, by placing itself in the middle of everything that’s going on for us, and by effortlessly assuming the role of traffic controller, inventor, judge, fortune teller, genius, stupid asshole, and saint.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this.

In fact: without the assumption of having a mind and a whole world of choices, life wouldn’t probably be nearly as fascinating.

But it leaves us with a few tough riddles and unanswerable questions.

Like: can I keep writing about people as if they really have a choice, willpower, and the capacity to rise above misery and suffering?

Well, that’s not up to me.

But it seems to me that this blog wanted to be written anyway.

Whether that was not or NOT not up to me.

And that’s how simple it can be.

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(Photo by @anniespratt, for Unsplash)