Let me try to explain to you how things really are.

We humans do like to think that we are different from other living things, a tree or a mammal of some kind, a bird. But we are not.

We have no more control than they do, although we have spent 300 years fooling ourselves that with our cleverness we can make life predictable.

How like us to try to change the world to assuage our fears instead of trying to change ourselves to accept that life is always, ALWAYS change. And that we are not in control.

You are not in control if you keep yourself very small and quiet. You are not in control if you always get A* grades out of life. You are not in control if everybody likes you. You are not in control if you obey all the rules, you are not in control if you break them.

I might die tomorrow. So might you. So might someone you love.

Given this fact, the answer is not to hold on ever tighter to the myth of control.

The answer is to glory in the wonder of it all. The beauty and the love. The rising and the falling. The sunshine and the rain. The gifts that fall into your hands from nowhere and deserve to be cherished. The losses that tear you apart in one fell swoop, or slowly like a thousand paper cuts.

This is a whole life. And there is nothing you can do but live in wonder at it, hold yourself in warmth and kindness when the losses come and let joy move you when the moon is bright and the night calls for dancing.