Hello Katy,
First I totally subscribe to Grandpa advice (no doubt that with the age we get more experienced about life if not wiser...)
Second, I will tell you my opinion and something from my own experience: my life changed so much in the last time, and so did the way I perceive life and world impact on me. I always believed that we have the power to shape our life how we wish, and at some point there is some truth in this, this is because we all posses the power of choice, and our choices reflects us or what we want to be.... (however the difficulty comes when what we chose prove in time not to be the best for us and nevertheless all things change with the time, like even rocks change their shape over the years..., so choice maybe like an experiment with unknown output). Sometimes, it even happens not to have any other choice for sometime, in that case if we really want the change than nothing remained than to wait for any opportunity and go with it... And I believe that life gives us all many choices, maybe not at once but in time... Now concerning other people or events in our life, even very connected to us (or under our influence) is up to their choices and circumstances, both things not very much in our control. We are not the masters of the world around us, and luckily we maybe the maximum the masters of our own selves. About my life being changed lately, it made me think a little bit if there may be some kind of destiny... As I said in my "needing a hug" message, I had "signs" that what I was afraid of will happen, and so it did, and funny that the more I tried to stop it from happening, the faster it really happened...maybe it's just a coincidence, but I learned that not always things stay in our hands, no matter how hard we try to avoid them. There are things that change and happen without asking us if we wish this...Not to mention accidents or some diseases, or death, or war or many other things we have no power over them... As I said before, life it's unpredictable, not in the way that we can't guess or imagine what may happen, but in the way that we can't stop some things from changing and happening. And by the way my personal opinion is that I better don't know that something terrible will happen if anyway I cannot change this.
If situation is not in our hands, there is nothing left but accept it, even if we don't like it and move on, sooner or later...
Anyway, we are affected by the things around us, the world have an impact on us and we have our impact on the world, some more some less, and manipulation of people was born this way...and still we can have good impact too: look at our hugs!
hugs,
ps: and yes, stay positive , unlike me now

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