Letting go, finding peace

I am reading the book Six Impossible Things to believe before Breakfast by Lewis Wolpert. One of the ideas in the book is that we are programmed from young to believe in causality. This comes from our tool making abilities, where we see some action resulting in some tool or outcome.

I have always believed in hard work. And I have been brought up to respect the people around me, to treat them nice. I have been dumbfounded by why my efforts to improve myself and to treat people nicely have not resulted in acceptance. I have sub consciously believed in causality. I have believed that I am responsible for the success and failure of my relationships, my business, politics and even global warming. It makes me depressed when all that effort does not give the results I expect it to. And I have been wrong. I am responsible for my own effort and my own actions. But whether some woman likes me or whether ultimately my business succeeds or fails is beyond my control. Heck, so many of us outside the United States did not want George Bush to have a second term but were dumbfounded when he got in a second time, with a majority to boot.

I am at peace now. I have not given up. I am still going to try and succeed in the photography business and in photography. I am going to continue to treat people as nicely as I can. But the difference is that if things do not go the way I had anticipated it, I am not going to take it personally anymore. My father has told me time and again that things are not under our control. I guess that I have understood it intellectually but it never sunk it. It has now.