40. IN COMMAND AND OUT OF CONTROL

The last of the human freedoms: to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.

- Viktor E. Frankl

When I got to my infantry battalion as a new officer in 2000, a combat tour seemed like a remote possibility. The Cold War had been over for nearly a decade and peacekeeping missions were the order of the day. The West had won. Then a small group of men crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

I was in Austria when 9/11 happened, where I’d just gotten out of jail for resisting arrest after a police officer tried to escort my stupid, sorry, drunken ass out of the bar where I was creating a scene and back to my hotel. Five months later, I’d be in Afghanistan on Canada’s first combat mission in almost fifty years. Events beyond my control had changed my life.

If we honestly commit to confronting reality, then we have to accept that external events we do not control can impact us. In 2019, Fridays for Future saw millions of climate strikers protesting in several global events. The movement had enormous momentum.

Then came COVID-19.

Amid lockdowns and physical distancing, 2020 and 2021 saw an end to large, in-person protests and with it, the publicity, all because of an event completely outside anyone’s control, the same as how none of us controls whether a world-killing asteroid like 99942 Apophis will impact the Earth. Most of us don’t control whether the color of our skin will influence how a police officer treats us, and while those of us in democratic countries might have some control over who gets elected, individually that influence is so small we’d be excused for thinking we had no control over that as well. Hell, we can’t even control traffic or grid lock.

All these things over which we have no control, and yet which impact us, to greater or lesser degrees. If it seems unfair, maybe it is. But, there’s no point getting angry about it. We might as well be angry at the sun for coming up.

Besides, if all we did was get angry, we might miss the ray of good news in all of this, which is that while there are indeed events outside our control, we’re ultimately in charge of how we interact with those events. In other words, we can prepare, both as individuals and as a group, and it is through our service to others that our communities will become prepared.

Because the truth, is that we are not helpless. Far from it.