I watched Hallelujah again last night. Rather, I finished watching it. We'd started it last week, but it's a two-hour documentary and we paused it. I don't think Mitzi and her sister were that into it, but I love it. So while they were watching some damsel in distress, princess and a dragon thing on Netflix, I finished watching Hallelujah in the Command Cave.

At some point, toward the end, Cohen is being interviewed about his late success and he demurs a bit saying, "You put in your best effort, but you can’t command the consequences."

I paused the playback and wrote that down. Partly because I love alliteration and the phrase "can't command the consequences" was arresting to me. And partly because it's a restatement of something I've learned, "Do your best, the rest isn't up to you."

We, in America, might be familiar with that notion in the aphorism, "It doesn't matter whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game that counts."

It's non-attachment to results, in Buddhism. It's the attachment, the desire, that leads us astray. Shifts our focus (everybody loves writing about focus these days), from the action to the objective. You can't control the objective, all you can control is your action, which is where your focus should be.

Yes, you must begin with the end in mind. But everything that matters is in between.

Great documentary.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:46 Tuesday, 12 March 2024