Many writers and thinkers emphasise the virtue of accepting what you cannot control. I think this is indeed a great virtue, and one that I do my best to follow. Sometimes, I even succeed!

In some cases, however, it is possible to control what you cannot control.

To speak generally, we might be concerned about some factor A that is indeed well out of our control. However, we don’t care about A for its own sake; if we look closely, we can see that we only care about A because it causes some outcome C. But for any particular outcome, there are usually (not always) multiple causes. So, we might be able to identify some other cause B that also causes C. If we have some way to exercise influence over B, then we can indeed wield control over C.

Two examples:

Environmental economics. Marine pollution is a serious issue. But we don’t care about pollution per se; we care about the negative effects of pollution. Recently, scientists have identified that the negative impact on marine ecosystems tends to be a cumulative effect of multiple sources of pollution; the impact of pollution can be (though is not always) greater than the sum of the impact of each source of pollution considered individually. Local policymakers cannot control global sources of pollution, such as microplastics drifting across international borders. But local policymakers can control local sources of pollution, such as runoff from local farms or factories. By reducing these local sources of pollution, local policymakers can, in fact, reduce the negative effects experienced by the ecosystem even due to the global pollution.

My own silly mind. I struggle with impatience. This can be a deep and profound recognition that the world is imperfect and human behaviour is simply not good enough; I am impatient for justice. Or this can be as mundane as wanting my latest online purchase to arrive in the mail (like I say, it’s a silly mind!). In either case, it’s not the impatience itself that I care about. Rather, it’s the stress caused by the impatience. If I care for myself, perhaps having a hot bath, eating a nourishing meal, and getting a good night’s sleep, I wake up the next morning still impatient for justice and/or my latest consumer device, but less stressed about the need to wait and more capable of seeing ways that I can nevertheless engage constructively with the world around me.