I have had a great deal of time to think over the last few weeks. Lots of time. Much of it spent blowing endless mountains of snow off our precious putting surfaces. Here is but a taste...

The above photo is a shot of the first pass across our putting green... on April 8th 2015. We finished clearing it ten hours later).

All of this alone time got me to thinking about the illusion of control. As I become more seasoned, the notion that we have dominion over how things progress becomes more absurd to me each day. We struggle and strive to plan, regulate, and restrict our way to nirvana, all the while finding ourselves stuck in a delusion.

Take our industry for example. We plan judiciously, play the odds, and do all of the things necessary to promote plant health and fine playing surfaces. Then... wham... a hurricane, or wham... a flood... or in our case this winter, wham... reams of snow that won't go away.  The best laid plans simply cannot prepare you for what to do when life serves you a tandem load full of lemons.

At the end of the day all one can really do is their best. It is always wise to have a plan, but for a plan to work effectively it must be based in flexibility. We can trick ourselves into believing that we are in total control of any given situation, but in truth we have to remain malleable enough to change with circumstances as they arise. By clinging to the illusion of control, we only set ourselves up for failure.

Lao Tzu, famous writer of the ancient text entitled the Tao Te Ching reminds us that our greatest strength lies in our ability to be flexible. He even uses plants to demonstrate this:

Living plants are flexible and tender;
the dead are brittle and dry.

-- Tao Te Ching

Such is life. When our personal situations don't proceed according to our pre-prescribed notions, we have to be able to let go and change on the fly.  By staying present and aware of our circumstances, we can go with the flow allowing our plans to change as necessary while still keeping our minds on what is most important in our lives.

This same flow can also apply to those close to us. By attempting to control the behavior of those around us, we invariably end up causing a great deal of unintentional suffering. We may think that we are doing those close to us a service by telling them what to do and when to do it, but in the end all we do is breed resentment.  By living Ghandi's mantra, "Be the change you seek" you will effect more positive transformation than you would by constantly trying to micro-manage others in your life. You'll have more friends, too.

Thinking our timing was right, we blew the snow off our greens. Then the umpteenth storm of the winter filled them back in. So we cleared the paths and blew them off again. Yeah, it was frustrating and no fun doing the job for a second time but in the end we reconciled ourselves to the fact that we have no control over the weather, only to our responses to it. All we could do was allow things to progress as they would and respond to the scenarios as they unfolded. We never lost sight of the final goal; we just had to relax a little and be willing to take a few detours along the way.