Life Is Like Sailing a Small Boat

Every once in a while I think about how much control I have over my life. I'm sure it's not 100%. But I feel it can't be no control at all.  I'd hate to think I only move about following the commands of nature or some unknown entity.

I imagine it must be about 30%. Here is how I think it is:

• FORCED NO CHOICE: things you must do, like eating, sleeping, breathing.
• PRESSURED TO DO: things best to do to avoid bad consequences like following the law, ability to get along with people, learn a skill to support yourself.
• JUST HAPPEN WITHOUT YOUR WILL:  like accidents, illnesses, intelligence, body, health, luck.

You cannot always predict what will happen and prepare yourself.

Here is a view I mostly agree with. I copied it from Gemini AI:

The 30% Rudder: Freedom, Regret, and Living Within Limits

We live in a culture that endlessly preaches absolute mastery—the comforting myth that if you just try hard enough and plan well enough, you can steer every outcome of your existence. Yet anyone who has lived for more than a few decades knows a quieter truth: most of the script is written before we ever pick up the pen.

Roughly 70% of our lives is governed by forces beyond our direct command—our genetic wiring, our early conditioning, the era into which we are dropped, and the unpredictable collisions of pure chance. When we exhaust ourselves trying to master that 70%, we simply break against reality.

Yet, within the remaining 30%, real and potent agency lives. We may not choose the weather, but we choose how we trim the sails. We don't control every thought or impulse that drifts uninvited into our minds, but we retain sovereignty over which ones we feed and which ones we veto before they harden into habit.

This 70/30 split also changes how we carry the weight of our past.

Regret loves to whisper a punishing lie: you had 100% control, and you blew it. When we beat ourselves up over poor choices from years ago, we commit a quiet error—we judge our past selves using our present brains. Back then, we were navigating a gale with a heavily compromised 70% baseline of blind spots, old wounds, and limited experience, doing the best our small 30% rudder could manage.

Yesterday’s mistakes eventually migrate into today’s unchangeable 70% landscape. We cannot rewrite that terrain, nor is there any wisdom in endless self-flagellation over a storm we didn't create. Instead, we offer grace to the weary traveler we used to be, treat those missteps as diagnostic data rather than permanent verdicts, and turn our focus back to the only lever we actually hold: how we steer the 30% right in front of us today.

What do you think about free will?