The further you go, the more apparent it is how little you actually control. Or, at least, that should be the case. If it isn’t, I wonder how you have learned to relate to suffering. Perhaps, you haven’t really learned that at all because other things have left you concluding that you know how to avoid suffering. But, the wise know that isn’t really possible. So, the aberration is simply that you think you can.
It doesn’t take much to detect what all is forfeited by that conclusion.
There is so much that happens in life that has nothing to do with us. So, to think we are also responsible for it is…arrogant, to say the least.
The truth might be closer to we are responsible for how we respond to most of the things in our lives.
This is no small distinction.
Not everything, for example, is a function of cause and effect. Somethings just happen. Randomly. Or, at the very least, outside of our ability to control it. Sure many things can cause cancer, but it still happens to people who avoid some or all of the things that do. Accidents happen. Lightning strikes. Weather exists, often predictably, but obviously not always. Forces of existence are not all perfectly or completely understood.
Being responsible is not always being prepared for anything that could happens. It is crazy sometimes how quickly we resort to the notion that we should have (or even could have) prevented something bad from happening. Bad things happen either way.
Perhaps we would be better off if we focused more on learning how to cope than to prevent. After all, it is our response to the things that happen in life that seems to make the most meaningful difference.