The sign, standing in the front yard of what once was a home but now is a doctor's office, usually proclaims, in its stuck-on black letters, the visit of a medical specialist, the day and time for a health class, some get-healthy tip or just blanket support for the local school's athletic teams.
For the past few weeks, however, it has told everyone driving past that "Life is what we make of it."
As inspirational messages go this one hardly merits a second glance. It is not clever, nor is it witty, nor does it offer some double meaning that takes the driver a few blocks to get. It seems simple enough and probably is something nearly everyone passing by has heard or read before.
But it is an outright, bald-faced lie.
It insinuates that we, the readers, have some control over life, our own and those of the people whose lives intersect with ours, either for a moment or for a significant part of their and our lives. Nothing could be further from the truth.
You may think you can control your own life, but remember that thought the next time your car breaks down for no explainable reason. Or the next time your get ill and can't figure out how that happened. Or the next time someone walks into your life and walks right back out of it. You have no control over your own life, so what gives anyone the false impression they can make life into something? Only signs like this one and those delusional self-help people who believe that we can be anything we want to be.
Don't misunderstand, much can be accomplished by those with a singular mindset and the drive and determination to stay with a project or plan and to never give up on themselves or the goal they seek. But for every one of those who succeed, there are many who toil on for an entire life with the same fortitude and determination and singularity of thought and never even made headway. Luck, fate, good fortune and the blessings of Almighty God play a larger role in this than most of us give credit.
You cannot control your own life and you most certainly cannot control others, though most of us would rather control others than control ourselves. You cannot, for instance, make someone love you. You can love them without condition or reservation, wholly and completely and do so with honesty, openness and sincerity, and they still might just walk away. You have no control over their reactions or the personal history that led them to you and, eventually, beyond you. You cannot control family members who, even though you love them, may make decisions that take them a continent or continents away from you, possibly into harm's way.
If these things happen you not only cannot control what happens to them, you cannot control how what happens to them will effect you. You are as much a prisoner of their lives and they are of yours. Because when you truly care for someone, they become so important to you that you feel their pain, you ache for them, you hurt for them, you still care for them, you worry about them, you think constantly of them. It doesn't matter that they no longer are directly part of your life, they remain a cog in your heart, turning and churning your emotions even from a distance.
So don't for a single second think you can control life and make what you want of it. As the great auto racer Jackie Stewart said, when asked what he recommended drivers do when involved in a spin (turn into the spin or turn away from it?), he said it was best just to sit back and enjoy the ride. That is the best we can do in life. That ride may at times be bumpy, at other times smooth, at times thrilling and exciting and at other times monotonous and boring, but it is wrong-headed and silly of us to think for a single moment that we have the wheel and the pedals. We are just passengers, along for the ride.
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