Control of any kind is an illusion. We are never full in control of anything — not our health or our possessions, not the weather, not our spouse, not our job, not our community, not our country or other nations. (The one exception . . . is our inner life.) All our technological miracles have obscured just how unpredictable and out-of-control human life still is. The first lesson of Buddhist teaching is the principle of impermanence: Nothing lasts, nothing can be counted on, everything changes. That is another way of saying that we can't control anything in our world, at least not for long. Everything is continually slipping through our grasp.
— Lewis Richmond, Work as a Spiritual Practice