The King and I

Quote of the Day - Pietro Aretino - 

"I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself."

How many of us can really say the above statement in confidence? Can we truly say that we are in complete control of ourselves? Are we not all servants to the whims of things other than ourselves?

As human beings, and especially as Jews we value self-control. Not just when it comes to our actions but as well as our thoughts and emotions. We have all learned about the dangers of anger, jealousy and desire. 

One could argue that it is just natural. We cannot help if we get angry; I cannot help if my mind wanders.  But that is not true. We choose how we think and feel. We can choose to be a patient person. It may take a lot of work because old habits die hard. I believe that most things that we say..."i cannot help it, its just who i am.." about refers to habits. Habits that we have cultured and grown over the course of our lives. 

Thoughts lead to words, Words lead to actions, Actions lead to habits, Habits lead to character.

Yes, its cliche. But if we hold that we can in essence control our actions, then we must be able to control our words and thus - we can control our thoughts. Too many times do I take the easy way out. I just let things go with the flow without being king over me. We spend a lot of time trying to control events, people, situations that  we have no business trying to control. One of the most freeing lessons I learned in high school was that you cannot control a situation, you can only control your reaction to it.  So many times we get so frustrated with the way the plans worked out, we get uber annoyed at the people in our lives..so being people we try to fix it, change it..make it closer to our liking. Usually that is mostly ineffective.

We are all born into a very specific set of circumstances. You were born frum/not frum. You have parents, no parents, married, divorced,community, gender, race, all these things and more can be very defining and you have absolutely no control over any of it! It can be frightening at times.  All we can do is do our best with what we are given and put our best efforts into making ourselves productive members of society We can only strive to be better ourselves and those around us.

So who do you choose to rule? Do you strive to be royal? Or do we let that annoying person on the train get to us? Do we let that stalled subway car raise our blood pressure? Its up to us to step up and take control and allow our truly royal nature sing!