The illusion of control.

I was exhausted, tired and my feed didn’t want to do a single step further, after I hiked almost 100km in 3 days. I sat down in a run-down restaurant by a river in a small, picturesque village in France to eat French fries and drink a Stella Artois.

I had about 5 more km to get to my hostel, which seems marginal compared to what I have walked the days before. But all I could think of was that I can’t. So I decided to sit right there until a solution comes up that doesn’t involve me walking.

As I seemed to be the only person in the universe at this specific point and time, I had no idea what that might look like. 13minutes later I was on a boat, spending the rest of the day with fun people exploring the back waters and being dropped of 100m away from my hostel at night. If I had made plans, this never would have happened.

What does this have to do with sustainability? The idea that we can control what happens is an illusion. If we stick to the notion of control, we deny that we deal with living systems. When we let go of the notion to control, we are open to respond context specific to what the situation requires and offers.