Today I stopped smoking weed.

I also went to the gym. After that, my legs felt like noodles. But it felt good. Great, in fact. But what really felt great about it? Was it the fact that my heart was pounding out of my chest? Not really. That didn't feel too good. Was it the fact that the sun was on the horizon and in my eyes the entire time I was there? Nope. That was incredibly irritating. Or maybe it was the fact that the one machine I used to use there every single day was broken. I'm not even gonna respond to that one.

No, you know why it felt great? Because I was taking control over my life. I made that change. It wasn't particularly my decision, that I attribute to my best friend. His name is Ryan. And if I had one person in my life that I could point to and say "That's the asshole who started this all!", it would be him. That's because when I met him again as an adult after many years of being apart, he had a much higher drive than me to achieve. I'd continue on with this line of thought, but that is for another time.

But it felt really good to make that change. Even though I'm saying goodbye to a past-time that I love. Goodbye, weed. I had convinced myself that my mood was based primarily on how high I was. My favorite thing in the world was to get totally blazed, and the moment when I'm coming down but not quite sober was the greatest. I would ponder the world I live in. And because I was high as shit, I knew the answers to everything. It was great.

Or so I thought.

The reality is that in the end, I was handing over the steering wheel of my Happiness vehicle to something that isn't me. When I was totally sober, I wasn't that happy. And that's not how it's supposed to work. Don't get me wrong, being high as hell led me to some very intriguing questions I would ask, thereby leading me to very interesting answers that allowed me to understand things better. And it made me look at the world in a very different light. But it had it's time. And I no longer need it. Now I alone control myself. I don't need a substance to tell me when to be happy.

I talked to my Aunt earlier tonight. By the way, I'll say it here that out of everyone in my family, I respect her intelligence more than anyone else. She's a Psychologist. And she rocks. Back to the point, she informed me of something I had never heard of before. It's called the locus of control. Locus, being Latin for 'place' or 'location'. It's a term in psychology used to infer as to where a person believes the control of their life originates from. I found the term to be incredibly important to me. Because it was something that I had come to a conclusion about for myself a long time ago, that I and I alone control me.

Most people would read that sentence and say "deh... who else controls you?!". Well, well, smarty pants. When that guy cut you off on the freeway, did you shout at him and honk your horn and yell something that rhymed with "jew plucking castle"? Yeah, you did. And when that ruined your morning and you got to work all pissed off and told your boss to go pluck himself as well, you allowed that dude on the freeway to control you. Specifically he controlled your emotions.

So tell me. Where does your locus of control lie? Do you control you? Or do outside influences control you?

I am not a superstitious person. I don't believe in luck. I rely on statistics and the probability theory. Gamblers have a tendency to rely on luck, and falsely believe that their odds in a particular game actually change. Just because I happened to flip a coin and it landed on heads ten times, does not mean the odds of it landing on tales has increased. The odds are still the same. 50-50. And no, luck has absolutely nothing to do with it. This is referred to as Gambler's Fallacy.

The same applies to life. Luck has no place in my world. If you happen to win the lottery, you are not the recipient of an enormous amount of luck. You are the recipient of chance. You just happened to be the one in a million. It wasn't the hat you wore, the breakfast you ate, or the underwear you didn't wash. It was math.

To me, it is very important to understand the world I live in. To realize that my world is affected by my actions and not some mystical entity is something that brings me much pleasure. It reminds me of a quote from Carl Sagan.

"I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this Cosmos, which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky."

I couldn't agree more, Carl.

So again I ask, are you controlled by things around you that just explode into your life without warning? Or does the control lie within?

The keys are on the table.

It's your decision as to who picks them up.