I once read a report that when asked, people guessed they had eighty percent control of their days – schedules, delays, changes, meetings, traffic, reception, et cetera, but that in reality, it was only three to seven percent.*
Anne Lamott

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all.**
Rumi

It’s the fourth elemental truth:
You are not in control,
But I wish I was –
Yet to notice what is going on inside of me
is half of the battle with my ego – who really wants to be
left unnoticed and get on with things –
Yet freedom begins when I take a moment to notice,
As Erich Fromm puts it:
leaving the prison of one’s ego and
achieving the freedom of openness to the world;^
The ego is a finite player, but
the Self is an infinite player.

*Anne Lamott’s Dusk Night Dawn;
** From Rumi’s The Guest House, William Seighart’s The Poetry Pharmacy;
^Erich Fromm’s The Revolution of Hope.